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.
The Music in My Ears 