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 to, 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.