“Gold Soundz” may just be Pavement’s poppiest moment ever to be recorded and released. Found in the middle of the great Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, it is positioned after the wild rocking of “Unfair” and precedes the jazzy and experimental “5-4=Unity” but finds the perfect middle ground to provide one of the band’s most lighter, softer and easy listening tracks in their wide catalogue of astounding music. I am a Pavement fan, so I might have a bit of a bias opinion on this stuff.

In terms of the mix, the track is very treble heavy. The bass guitar and drum pedal are present are audible but are pushed back putting the focus on the guitars and various cymbals with Stephen Malkmus’ voice right in the middle of it all. Malkmus sings continuously, his lyrics roll right off the tongue from the first verse and straight into the chorus without any sign of effort, though they may not mean anything in particular they still manage to make a lot of sense in a way coming off quite confusing but beautiful in the process.

Took me a while to get into “Gold Soundz” though. Not really sure why. But I can’t help but feel happy when I hear it from time to time.