Word: malkmus
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...like bands like The Velvet Underground. I'm not the only person who felt this way, however: it sold many thousands of copies and made Pavement the band to beat for a million aspiring rock bands (including mine). Major labels have been courting Pavement's songwriter and lyricist, Steven Malkmus, for the past few years because, in the words of an industry insider, "they have realized that he can write songs like Tom Petty if he wants...
...friend of mine recently said that Malkmus was a Bob Dylan for our times: "Every night he goes out on stage and sings different words, and every time it's just as great." He has been accused of singing nonsense; the liner notes in his records include lists of words which have no relation to one another aside from sounding similar ("Close Shave. Chess Leave. Clove Leash." etc). But it doesn't sound like nonsense to me. While any one song might not have a coherent "plot," such as boy-meets-girl or man-hit-the-road, which...
...stuff prior of Slanted is now available on a Drag City CD called Westing, By Musket and Sextant), and the whole dynamic seemed changed, for the worse. The Pavement of Crooked Rain is indeed a very different animal from past records. Until now every Pavement record was the product Malkmus and his partner Spiral Stairs, plus drumming by a crazy and amazing hippie named Gary. They played all the instruments, and in most cases there wasn't even a bass guitar. This may not sound so appealing, but it was how they did it, and believe met it worked...
There's also something awry in the singing. Malkmus has renounced nonsensical lyrics (to a certain degree) and spends a lot of the record singing bitterly about the music industry, the New York rocker/druggie lifestyle, California politics... On the first single, "Cut Your Hair," he criticizes the music industry (as Nirvana did with their "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter") just as he offers up exactly the sort of pop gem that keeps it alive. Between insanely catchy "Woo woo woo woo ooh oohs" at the beginning of each verse, he sings lyrics like "Songs mean a lot/When songs are bought/And...