Pavement-Slanted and Enchanted again

Last weekend many blogs had this Vinyl theme where they looked back at different records they owned back in the day (back in the day we used to say "back in the day"). In the days of vinyl, I was mostly an AOR junkie. I had every Journey album with Steve Perry, all the Foreigner records, the Van Halen records as well as now out of print classics like Eric Martin Band's Sucker for a Pretty Face and Eddie and the Tide's Go Out and Get It!

At college I started listening to other, more alternative bands as I became exposed to other styles of music. As a result, one of the last vinyl records I bought new was Pavement's Slanted and Enchanted (1992). This album took a long time to get into, I bought it mainly because I liked the song "Summer Babe". I recently got this on CD, I haven't heard it since 1992. It was fun to hear these tunes again after such a long time.

Slanted and Enchanted is the epitome of slacker rock, ramshackle grooves that alternate between acoustic dreaminess and indie rock. Even the singing is lazy, the singer kind of warbles in a deadpan monotone with occasional shouting. Some of the ironic depression dates the album, as one song consists mainly of the singer saying "I'm tryin', I'm tryin', I'm tryin', I'm tryin" over an equally repetitive beat. The songs seem almost formless during the first 100 listens, but after a while the album takes shape. Pavement has a lot of texture to their sound and a unique chemestry of being able to play one step away from random noise.

All in all, it's a good record as both nostalgia and purely on musical merits. And it takes nerve to rip off the melody to Jim Croce's "Operator" for a song, in this case "Trigger Cut".