Pavement

Slanted and Enchanted (1992)

Pavement's debut is deliberately fractured — verses fray into tape hiss, hooks arrive slightly out of focus, and Stephen Malkmus's guitar lines slouch instead of resolve, turning lo-fi limitation into a stylistic signature rather than an excuse. 'Summer Babe (Winter Version)' is the entry point, a woozy, melodic non sequitur that somehow still functions as a single; 'Here' and 'Trigger Cut' show the same sleight of hand — real songcraft smuggled under a scuzzy, indifferent surface. It set the template for a decade of American indie rock that treated irony and melody as compatible instincts, not opposing ones.

Sleeve notes

Slanted and Enchanted · 1992

Pavement were deeply committed to sounding as if they were not trying and deeply skilled at executing that commitment. Stephen Malkmus's lyrics — circling around ideas, approaching conclusions and abandoning them, making puns that were also genuine observations — gave the songs an intelligence that the lo-fi production and disengaged vocal delivery deliberately obscured. This was a form of wit that had few predecessors in rock music.

Slanted and Enchanted (1992) was one of the most influential records of the nineties, not because of what it did but because of its attitude toward doing: the deliberate roughness of the production, the way the songs seemed to trust the listener to understand them without being spelled out. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) refined the approach and added a more explicitly melodic layer; "Cut Your Hair" is genuinely a pop song, played straight. Wowee Zowee (1995), which scattered in more directions, is the record their most serious admirers prefer. Malkmus and drummer-percussionist Bob Nastanovich also played in David Berman's Silver Jews.