Tag Archives: pavement

#1279: Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream

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‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is the penultimate track on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners album, released back in 1997. I can’t recall if I’ve ever said on here, but usually I switch between Crooked Rain… and Terror Twilight as my go-to listen-through Pavement albums. But over the years, Brighten the Corners has been slowly creeping up and calmly nudging it’s way into pole position too. My view, you can’t go wrong with any Pavement album. I’ve enjoyed a good chunk of Brighten… for the longest time. But as I’ve revisited over the years, with the big 3-0 approaching and being 30 now, the record’s become a great comfort. Being the ‘turning 30’ album it is, I can sort of relate with Stephen Malkmus who was going through the same stage of life at the time of making the album, even with surrealism and lyrical wordplay he tends to incorporate in his songs.

‘Starlings…’ was originally known as ‘The Werewolf Song’, assumedly because of the “ah-woooo” refrains during the chorus, and was introduced as so when the band played the Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1996. They did this performance on either 15th or 16th June, and a month later, they were in a studio in North Carolina recording the music that would end of being Brighten the Corners. Somewhere in between, Stephen Malkmus found the time to get some lyrics down to set amidst the music. Or maybe even during the recording sessions he did, the band usually got the performances to tape first and he would lay down his vocals afterwards. And with the final lyrics, you get a set of words that aren’t very easy to break down and get to the nitty-gritty about. They’re vague in typical Malkmus fashion. But just the song title of ‘Starlings of the Slipstream’ is enough to bring an image my head, much like a lot of other lyrics you’ll find in the track. So maybe it’s more about the imagery in this song, rather than the meaning.

So it would be the logical move to go through this song line-by-line to try and express what imagery’s conjured up by each respective lyric. But I feel that would kind of be a waste of my time, and you probably wouldn’t want to read that either. Rather, I’ll just list the few things that stick out to me when I think about the song. Overall, the chord changes and the stopping/starting motion the music holds in the verses. Each smack of the crash cymbal with the guitar strum feels very releasing. And then those stop-starts transition into the werewolf choruses where Malkmus recites the song’s title. Those moments are quite entrancing in their own ways too. The way Malkmus intensifies his vocal on the “I put a spy-cam in a sorority” line. Didn’t need to do it, comes from out of nowhere, but always grateful that he chose to sing it that way. And I like how the track just falls into this noisy outro with two guitars wailing between notes before everything fizzles out to an end. Somewhere I read a comment that referred to ‘Starlings…’ as the song that sounds like the final track but isn’t. And while I got a laugh and did think that the comment was sort of right, it does the best job as the second-last one. Gives us that last bit of levity before ‘Fin’ really ends the album on a poignant note.

#1262: Pavement – Spit on a Stranger

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So I was talking about Pavement’s ‘Speak, See, Remember’ the other day, another song from the Terror Twilight album, and how I downloaded the LP on the 8th June 2012. Well, at the same time, I went ahead to check the properties of the other song files. It turned out that I had separately downloaded album opener ‘Spit on a Stranger’ a few months earlier, in February or so. Why? Only my 17-year-old self would know, ’cause this 30-year-old doesn’t remember.* But I’m thinking, by the time I decided to download all the other songs, I really liked ‘Carrot Rope’ and I must have grown to like ‘…Stranger’ a lot. So clearly it made sense to. Good thing I did too, because the album is one I can let run from front to back on any occasion. Feels good for my soul.

The image/concept of spitting on a stranger sounds understandably gross and needless, but it goes far more deeper than that in the way songwriter Stephen Malkmus approaches it. The track is a truly earnest falling-in-love song, in which the narrator – lucky enough to find themselves being one of the two involved in the relationship – begins to realize the positive effects this other person has on them, giving the narrator the determination to do whatever it takes to make the relationship work and hopefully last. So what does the ‘spit on a stranger’ phrase actually mean? Well, I think it’s roundabout way of referring to kissing. ‘Cause that’s what happens on dates that go well, I guess. We kiss, and we essentially get our spit on this person we’ve known for a relatively short amount of time. It’s a slightly ugly way to put it. The song is anything but, with the golden guitar work and wispy synthesizer and Malkmus’s sighing vocal delivery. A track to play to a glorious sunset, or sunrise even.

The big question I have about ‘…Stranger’ are the additional vocals on the right-hand side that come into the mix at around a minute and 38 seconds in. Anyone know what’s being said? I don’t, but I always try and sing along to them all the same. They provide a very nice countermelody during the proceedings. Had things gone producer Nigel Godrich’s way, ‘Spit on a Stranger’ would have been the closer on Terror Twilight. His proposed tracklist was put into practice on the 2022 Farewell Horizontal reissue. I’ve gotta say, it works beautifully as “the last song”. Ending the whole record on the line, “I’ll be the one that leaves you high”, would have been very suitable. But introducing the listener to the album’s “world” with the number is something I’m just too used to at this point. I would have only been four at the time of the album’s initial release, but even I get some sort of nostalgic feeling from the song. Feels like one that symbolises the end of the ’90s. And the end of the band during the initial run.

*08/01/26 – Thinking about it now, I’m sure I downloaded ‘Spit on a Stranger’ on its own on the mere fact it was a single by Pavement, and I wanted to test the waters before fully diving into Terror Twilight as a whole. You can see why I forgot, because it was a very simple decision that I thought nothing of at the time.

#1258: Pavement – Speak, See, Remember

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According to the old family computer, I downloaded Pavement’s Terror Twilight on 8th June 2012. That specific date marked 13 years to the day it had been available to the public since its release in 1999. I remember there being some hope that an extended reissue of the album would be released that year too. That didn’t happen, and instead Pavement fans had to wait 10 more years for that package to come through. ‘Speak, See, Remember’ is the ninth track on the album. It’s the least popular on there, looking at the Spotify numbers. But in my case, it was one of the “deep” cuts of the record that I got into nearly immediately. Was a number that frequently played on those bus journeys to school back in the day.

I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but a lot of Pavement songs (more specifically songs by Stephen Malkmus) contain melodies that more or less follow those played by the main guitar in the mix. And ‘Speak, See, Remember’ is no different. In various interviews, Malmus mentions that he doesn’t focus so much on the lyrical content of his work, seeing it more as exercise in wordplay and the like. So I’ve just come to think that he had the music ready and just wrote whatever sounded good at the time. But it’s not like the words in this track don’t make sense or aren’t worthy to look into. If I were to offer my suggestion… sounds to me like it’s about a man working an office job, having to go through usual office conversation, which then turns into a commentary on urbanisation and capitalisation at the end. Bit of a shift in topic to match the shift in music that happens with a minute-and-a-half left to go, when the band really get to rocking and culminates in this descending-scale guitar breakdown.

The song initially starts out as, what I’ve always thought of, one that you’d hear in some kind of underground, smooth jazzy kind of night club. The tempo has a swing to it that you want to click your fingers to every time the snare hits. There are those little piano chords that arrive once in a while. And Malkmus as ever provides a laidback but still endearing vocal. The track contains what I think is the second usage of a “Remember/December” rhyme in a Pavement song after being used initially in ‘Gold Soundz’. Thought that was kind of interesting. I’ve always wondered if that “Do it, do it, do it” uttered by Malkmus was inspired by Lindsey Buckingham doing the same in Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Second Hand News’. And also, the album title comes directly from this song too. Without it, we may have had the album Farewell Horizontal on our hands. Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

#1210: Pavement – Silence Kit

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Now, hear me out. I know this song’s recognised to be officially called ‘Silence Kid‘. But for a long time, it was referred to as ‘Silence Kit’ because, on the original artwork, an accidental ink splodge caused the ‘d’ to look more like a ‘t’. I’ve seen that original artwork and, to me, it doesn’t even look like it was meant to resemble a ‘d’ in the first place. Even so, I’ve become so used to having ‘kit’ on my computer, phone, whatever for all this time, it doesn’t seem right to change it to what’s supposedly the correct title. And plus the band refer to it by the “wrong” title in their setlists sometimes. So when it comes down to it, I don’t think there’s any right way to refer to this tune. At least that’s what I’ll keep on telling myself.

The track is the opener on Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the band’s second album, released in 1994. One of my personal favourite LPs flat out, I gotta say. Everything about Pavement is right up there to me. Why do I like the album so much? I can’t really say in much depth. It’s simply one good song after another, all of them takes on genres of the past that frontman Stephen Malkmus wasn’t so fond of, like some country rock by the Eagles or general classic rock, while also paying homage to others. Listening through is always a good time and, as I said, it all begins with ‘Silence Kit’. I’ve come to think of this track as a tribute to the quiet people out there who are just trying to get through their days, doing their own thing and having big plans for the future. Ambitions and all. But then things take a detour in the outro, where a drummer is introduced into the fold, they take ecstasy and end up masturbating after the show. And then the song ends. An unexpected shift in tone, for sure. But you gotta like it. Could be done a lot worse.

What initially starts with the band messing around for the first 20 seconds really bursts into life after, with that fuzzy guitar blasting out the song’s main riff. I’ve noticed that ‘Silence Kit’ almost has a very monoaural mix to it. The main guitar, drums and bass guitar are all in the centre, alongside Malkmus’s vocal of course. Kinda gives that ’60s vibe where mono was the way to go in terms of album recordings. Gives the track that extra punch. But there’s also a guitar overdub on the left that balances things out. I want to say I want to hear another Malkmus vocal underneath it all. It’s buried in the mix, but comes in clearer during the “Talk about your family” verse. The melody Malkmus sings with is slightly lifted from Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’. Whether this was intentional, no one really knows. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least a little influence. On an album that’s kinda spoofing the classic rock of America, it wouldn’t be amiss to make a nod to one of the pioneers of rock and roll in the ’50s. A fine, fine opener introducing the world to what was then a new Pavement with Steve ‘Westie’ West now on the drums.

#1180: Pavement – Shady Lane

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Ah, the second song I ever heard by Pavement. I can sort of remember hearing it for the first time. I may have been flicking through the channels as I was wont to do in the day, found myself going back to MTV2, and when the channel popped up on the screen, there was the video for ‘Shady Lane’ playing. The chyron came up near the song’s end showing the band and song name, “PAVEMENT”, “SHADY LANE”, just like that, and I immediately recognised them as the people that did that ‘Cut Your Hair’ song, which I also saw on MTV2 sometime before and immediately took a shine towards. So now I knew two Pavement songs, and both of them sounded pretty cool.

A couple more times I saw that video on the same channel, and after those instances it was a guaranteed ‘liked’ song in my head. Seeing the video didn’t answer the question as to who the lead singer in the band was. No one visibly lip-syncs in the ‘Cut Your Hair’ video, and Stephen Malkmus’s head is missing in the shot where the band’s performing in ‘Shady Lane’. So I was still puzzled on that front. ‘Stereo’ fixed that, but that’s a story for another day. I got an iPod Nano from an “uncle” of mine when I was 12, “uncle” as in “male family friend”, and ‘Shady Lane’ was an instant add on there. Been a mainstay in any music library of mine ever since.

‘Shady Lane’ is the second song on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners album from 1997. Also released as the second single from it too, hence the video. That album is very much about turning 30 years of age, a point I’ve said before in another post for a song from that album, and the pressures that come along with it. ‘Shady Lane’ handles the topic of getting into a steady relationship, settling down and having the kids, the pets, the white picket fences. That’s the ‘shady lane’ in question. Malkmus wants that going for him, he straight up says so. And he brings it round to us all, saying that everybody wants one. And needs one too. But of course, Malkmus doesn’t spell those things out, writing about them in the quasi-cryptic but earnest manner that only he can. There are some brilliant lyrics in this tune. Possesses a fine riff. There’s a fake-out ending halfway through. It’s a great singalong. I much prefer the album version to the single edit, which was sped up a bit and has a higher pitch as a result, but I edited it so it ends before the ‘J vs. S’ instrumental. Always thought it took the momentum out of things.