Album Reviews

When your wildly influential band dissolves after five albums and a decade of indie acclaim, separating yourself from your past is near impossible. If any band defined the old “critically adored, publicly dismissed” adage, it was Pavement. If you came of age in the sixties or seventies it’s probably hard to believe lines like “Lies and betrayals/ Fruit-covered nails/ Electricity or lust/ Won’t break the door” have had as much impact on a certain generation as anything by Dylan or The Beatles; but it’s true. Sure, it happened to be Generation X, but ask anyone who uses the words “indie”, “alternative”, or “college rock” more than once a month to name the best album of the nineties, and you’re bound to hear a whole lot of “Like, wow…that’d have to be, like, Slanted & Enchanted dude.”

Of course critics, musicians, and a small cult-like following ate up everything these Stockton boys released, but at the end of the day it was Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Stone Temple Pilots who ruled the airwaves and moved into mansions while developing drug habits and a sense of entitlement to all of life’s luxuries simply because we felt their pain. We were introduced to a money making machine in the form of two words, “teenaged angst”; and it paid off huge.

Apparently, being an authentic American original barely pays the rent. Not only that, you have to deal with being largely misunderstood by a public who wants instant gratification in the form of a catchy hook and a chunky power chord. Sheets of noise with a distant melodic undercurrent and cryptic lyrics nonchalantly tossed off by someone who sounds like they just buried a bong-load is a tough sell in any climate, and after too many years of touring in a beat-up bus and playing to drunken college kids in venues that made your average living room seem downright massive, Pavement packed it in. Not that being underappreciated and ahead of your time doesn’t have its perks- it’s just that it usually takes ten years before people realize what they’d missed.

Perhaps the true genius of Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus is that he managed to convince everyone that he was wholly original when he was really just reworking post-punk’s most original and underappreciated band, The Fall. He never hid the fact, but since most people knew them by name only, folks could easily digest the CCR and Echo And The Bunnymen influences, which made Pavement’s actual music appear to be groundbreaking by comparison, when in actuality all Malkmus was trying to do was write his own This Nation’s Saving Grace.

But alas, when your hero is a toothless, bitter and broke, barley recognizable version of his former self some twenty-years on, it’s time to re-examine your priorities. And with his eponymous solo set, Stephen Malkmus did just that. Gone were the obscure one-liners, replaced with lyrics that told complete stories that anyone could get in one listen. The shards of noise turned into tight, radio-friendly melodies, and song titles like "Recorder Grot" were left in favor of "Discretion Grove" and "The Hook."

While its 2003 follow-up, Pig Lib (Matador) saw a return to the guitar driven, quirky style of yesteryear, it too failed to make an impact beyond his dedicated minions, but with >Face The Truth, is it possible we’ll soon see our fearless indie hero on the cover of Rolling Stone, and talking real estate on an episode of Cribs? Probably not. Fate seems content to keep him as the best artist to never be on a major, and while his latest won’t have him rubbing shoulders with the Killers or The Strokes, it’s easily one of the best records to bear his name.

From the opening notes of "Pencil Rot," it’s clear that Stephen’s sense of humor is still sharp as a ginsu, and his past pleasure of synthesizer noodling has taken shape with a fully formed composition that allows the electronics to be the driving force of the song, and not some blurb that makes you think he’s poking fun at synth bands. Yes, his voice still sounds like some snot-nosed, over-privileged, elitist brat that was always the one saying “I’m telling your mommy what you said”, but that’s what makes him so great, and is why he elicits such strong feelings of hate and admiration at the same time.

"It Kills" and" I’ve Hardly Been" follow in a similar vein, but when the lovely ballad "Freeze The Saints" gets going, you’ll be hard pressed to not yearn for your high school honey. The sublime, watery solo hinting at a man content with where he’s at in life, it also suggests that maybe all the noise on Pavement albums was a deliberate attempt to hide his innate ability to write poppy, melodic songs that demonstrate he has actual feelings. The crowned King of lo-fi has discovered the studio can be his friend too, and the lovely production work lets you clearly hear all that’s going on, not just a reasonable facsimile of what you think an acoustic guitar and a soft voice sounds like.

It’s also a guitar album, and on "No More Shoes" he lets loose. It’s a long jam, with heavy solos that recalls a love of hard rock bands. But try as he might, Malkmus was always more into new wave than jam band metal, and "No More Shoes" only serves to show how good he is at three minute pop-rock tunes, not some Led Zeppelin-like epic wankfest that basically goes nowhere fast and doesn’t know what to do when it does get there.

He quickly rights the wrong with "Mama," an irresistible power-pop piece featuring his over-simplistic guitar solos and falsetto warble that made us love him in the first place. For those who actually own Pavement albums, try listening to the first bars of "Loud Cloud Crowd" without singing “I was dressed for success”, and I’ll buy you a Coke.

I remember seeing an interview a few years back where he was asked to list a guilty pleasure. He answered that he really liked Madonna’s latest tune, "Music," and for the first time ever he serves up a potential dance floor hit in the name of "Kindling For The Master"-a funky; bass and synth-driven tune that drives home the fundamental meaning of the entire album.

Face The Truth is basically Malkmus letting it all hang out. It’s got everything- all his styles rolled into one album that somehow works without coming off like he’s trying to please everyone. Malkmus is so good it’ll probably take him another twenty years to get the respect he deserves. Not a bad a thing really, seeing as how it only took ten for people to realize how good the Velvet Underground were.