Pavement’s ‘Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain:’ Too weird for the charts, too great to Ignore

If Slanted and Enchanted was Pavement’s brilliant accident — garage-sale amps, cryptic in-jokes, and the kind of confidence only born of not caring — then Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was the moment they started wondering what it meant to be a “real band.” Split between New York City studios and their scruffy hometown of Stockton, California, the recording itself mirrors the album’s personality: half reaching for bigger stages, half stubbornly clinging to the garage. It has just enough polish to suggest maturity but still sounds like it might unravel mid-song. Which is, of course, the point.

“Goodnight to the rock ‘n’ roll era, ’cause they don’t need you anymore.”

Their influences peek through in ways both reverent and irreverent. You can hear the Velvet Underground’s weary cool in the gui