Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Pavement - Westing (By Musket and Sextant) LP

Untitled

Domino (2016, Reissue)

This LP has been missing from my Pavement collection for way too long.  Yes, I have had the Perfect Sound Forever and the other various 7"s that make up the bulk of the songs for a really long time.  And sure, the CD version of this is actually the 2nd Pavement record I ever bought back in 1995 after being thoroughly blown away by Wowee Zowee (At the time I thought surely the indie one before they were even on Matador would be even cooler).  But I never got around to buying this on LP.

Domino rereleased it a couple of years ago.  It's on nice thick 180 gram vinyl and these terribly recorded songs have never sounded more terrible (and by that, I mean they sound great).  The fidelity was never the point of any of these songs.  They were recorded super early in the bands history and a recording budget was pretty much nonexistent at the time.  Still, these songs are some of my favorite all of these years later.

"Box Elder" is a smash hit from the band's very first, self released 7"  "Forklift" is a fuzzy bit of weirdness that really connected with me in high school and has been lodged in my brain ever since.  "Debris Slide" is just perfect with an anthemic chorus that gets me singing along all these years later (even though it still sounds like they're saying "grease fire" and not "debris slide" to me).  Maybe this compilation isn't Pavement's most polished or best outing, but there's something magical in these songs that has kept me coming back over and over again for the past twenty five years.

Pavement - "Box Elder":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_6NEePhHCA

Pavement - "Debris Slide":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwHTMrZptG4

Pavement - "Forklift":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67p7DN-SWo

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