submissions
| Pavement – Haunt You Down Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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really? was it you who deciphered the rosetta stone too?
this song is obviously a rehearsal goof-off, but still features some lovely liquid guitar for brief beatific appreciation refreshment. |
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| Pavement – Type Slowly Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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no comments? you're all wrong then. the whole thing just sounds half awake to me but i'm not going to attempt to ascribe meaning. just love it as a surrealist jumble of snipers, reptile homes and fairy-tale bad guys. it's also a vocal tour-de-force from sm, from the softly sung prettiness of 'the edge of creation is blurred and blushed' to the yodel of 'liberals...' gorgeous guitar, lots of genius rhyming ('people of the bay - it is excruciatingly grey', 'trolls in the glen are consorting again'; it is quietly one of pavement's best. is 'brighten' still a bit underrated? i really hope they do get the deluxe version out, cos even though i probably have most of the tracks (i seem to have about seven hundred versions of 'shady lane' for a start), this seemed a fertile period to me, with 'infinite spark', 'starlings' and 'type slowly' especially. |
submissions
| Pavement – Trigger Cut/Wounded-Kite at :17 Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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it's funny, because i listen to pavement infrequently these days, but his words are just beyond the thumpingly obvious tales and metaphors of pretty much every other band i like. 'lies and betrayals, fruit covered nails; electricity and lust...' is one of the greatest openings i've heard. it means nothing but sounds brilliant.
even better is 'ex-magician, still knows the tricks', which on face value is funny, but also translates to how we can call on our experiences. i think i like the idea of of an ex-magician showing his bus pass and then whipping some flowers from up his sleeve... |
submissions
| Pavement – Texas Never Whispers Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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yeah...there is a repeated, whispered, 'texas never whispers' at the end. i love how it drops into the guitar break after the chorus; that shift always made me think of the sound from a seedy underground club somewhere. |
submissions
| Pavement – Strings of Nashville Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i love how it's muffled. i love the sound of the sea. a lovely picked guitar, and 'watch the songs expire' is a four word poem. fucking brilliant. with 'gold soundz', this is one of the greatest a/b's ever. a song to fall asleep to with a faraway smile on your face. |
submissions
| Pavement – Stop Breathing Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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although it does the silliness of war and tennis whites, 'stop breathing' is a great piece of off-kilter melancholy pop. i loved how pavement played with tunings so that the guitars sounded off-key but still melodic and right; and 'write it on a postcard - dad they broke me...dad they broke me' slays me every time i hear it. |
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| Pavement – Stereo Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i like the way he goes from bored sing-song on 'see us wave to the camera...' to the lush 'high-ho silver ride' bit. people shouting interjections in songs irritates the shit out of me (errm...i appear to be 'folk jam'ming) but pavement do it with such charm (see 'carrot rope' for the ultimate in loveably goofy gang). bob used to stalk the stage live shouting lots of these bits like the 'i know him and he does'. i don't really look to music for comedy, but this works great. |
submissions
| Pavement – Starlings of the Slipstream Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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as usual, i don't give a monkeys for meaning, i just know that somehow 'slavic princess with a rose, in her teeth do you suppose' is genius and that 'trader of a lowland breed, call a jitney drive away, in the slipstream we will stay' lumps my throat at 30 paces. just more genius. i can't believe how many times i've used that word commenting on their songs...to such a degree that i've either rendered it meaningless, or that malkmus is one of the few true musical genii that we indie-kidz have had the pleasure of listening to. |
submissions
| Pavement – Spit On A Stranger Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i loved it from the off when i bought 'terror...', and always thought of it romantically (especially the flirty little 'honey i'm a prize and you're a catch and we're the perfect match' bit), but knowing that there was probably some twisted malk-undercurrent in there, smirking at the possibility of people reading it that way.
now, it actually sounds a little pedestrian to me, but it sounds like it was about someone who had become cynical about relationships meeting the protagonist and him being being completely blown away. he then seeks to win that person over by trying to make everything perfect. perhaps i just interpret it that way because i've probably tried to do that (in a spectacularly rubbish fashion) myself on a number of occasions. |
submissions
| Pavement – So Stark (You're a Skyscraper) Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i thought it was 'waits in the taxi while room service calls'. but a great little song. the bass is really prominent and with the lyrics gives it a slightly dark undercurrent. saw them play it a couple of times live and it works in that forum too. |
submissions
| Pavement – Silence Kid Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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the first time i put on 'crooked rain' i laughed at the wholesale lift from buddy holly. genius steals and all, and somehow when pavement did it, it was just funny.
totally agree about the lack of meaning...or at least, such codified meaning that it just becomes a collection of clever phrases and couplets. i bet malkmus, if he ever sees anything like this, laughs his arse off at all the head-scratching interpretive guessing games. just a great sound, great lyrics, an entertainingly lifted melody; another pavemental treat... |
submissions
| Pavement – Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse) Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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devastatorjr is spot on. how the fuck a line like 'someone took...in these pants...somebody painted over paint; painted wood' has some sort of profound effect on me i will never know. both verses in fact are perfection. i've never really tried to interpret any of it, but 'so look up and watch the camera lens, when the risers fade' has that weight of meaning about it, just the sound, the way the words sit together, that it sounds like the end of everything in the room. i love the fact that it sounds so fucking jaunty as well.
the salon cover is decent, but i had the fortune to see pavement play it live in either '95 or '96 and it made my evening - i think in the end i saw them play pretty much everything that i love over various shows apart from 'greenlander'. |
submissions
| Pavement – Shady Lane Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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the more of these i read, the more i realise that one of the things i love about pavement is that i really don't care what most of the songs are about, but isolated little couplets or fragments sound clever, or funny, or manage to create a lump in my throat seemingly out of proportion to a short phrase (see 'i trust you will tell me if i am making a fool of myself', 'cos no-one's there to read your reflection when i'm gone', 'it has a nice ring when you laugh', 'and the sun won't stall, and the land will never fall', etc, etc).
'shady lane' is light and fun, and each verse is an almost perfect little coded play - seems to be a more coherent and consistent narrative than most pavement songs. but i still don't care what it means; i just celebrate that somebody in a relatively popular band will throw 'right in front of all the bell-boys and the over-friendly concierge' into a pop song. oh, and 'blind date with a chancer, we had oysters and dry lancers' is genius for some reason. |
submissions
| Pavement – Secret Knowledge of Backroads Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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great little song moving at its own pace. personally i prefer the malk-assisted silver jews version from 'the arizona record' (a great e.p. all the way through from 'secret knowledge...' to the dolorous, clanging 'bar scene from star wars'. the lyrics differ significantly between the two, but either is great. |
submissions
| Pavement – Secret Knowledge of Backroads Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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great little song moving at its own pace. personally i prefer the malk-assisted silver jews version from 'the arizona record' (a great e.p. all the way through from 'secret knowledge...' to the dolorous, clanging 'bar scene from star wars'. the lyrics differ significantly between the two, but either is great. |
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| Pavement – Pueblo Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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meaning irrelevant. instead, just bathe in that beautiful chorus guitar part - the one thing that elevates it from middling to throat-lump forming. |
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| Pavement – Perfume-V Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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great on 'slanted', great live. both 'she shivered like a vein slashed bright and new' and 'when it looks like a wife's ex-plot, we'll cover all the rugs in cheap perfume' are gaudy-bright romanticism in their weight and rhythm. fucking great lines, and then the way the guitars rise and hover at the end of those lines to lead us to the chorus is genius. magoo did an interesting version where they dropped the chorus into slow-mo...but nowhere near as good as the original. |
submissions
| Pavement – Our Singer Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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always thought it was 'and all the groovy ones'. it's a great, clanging, downtempo number to end the-greatest-indie-rock-album-of-all-time. |
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| Pavement – Major Leagues Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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'relationships hey, hey, hey...' i like how malkmus can do silly sounding lines ('remember in december'), but somewhere in the sound and intonation they get imbued with something....more.... |
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| Pavement – Infinite Spark Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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cor. two entries. i posted my thoughts under 'fin', but in short SM-does-MOR-genius-heartbreak. well done SM. |
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| Pavement – In the Mouth a Desert Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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it was the sound of the underground in 1992. the first of theirs to really grip me. it was just dark and thrilling, glowering out from track 4 and making you feel you were part of something secret and brilliant watching them live. i never cared what it was about, it just sounded scabrous and de-tuned yet melodic and unlike the rest of the dreck that was around. |
submissions
| Pavement – Gold Soundz Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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ok, and for the murder/mexico theory; that deserves some plaudits in examining the outer limits of human sanity. you sure you haven't got it confused with eminem and 'stan'? |
submissions
| Pavement – Gold Soundz Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i just wouldn't know where to start with this. it's the sound of extraordinarily bright summers that i only vaguely remember but know were fantastic. one of his more humanised lyrics. i always thought it was 'allocating that word...' that works better for me.
it's one of those songs that i forget about; but when i put it on, it opens up a big box of summer memories and i remember that it is truly one of the greatest soundz i've ever heard... (and 'strings' on the b-side was fucking great too) |
submissions
| Pavement – Here Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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how does malkmus' codified trickery still manage to get people in the throat so many times? on this it's 'And all the spanish candles they sold away have gone to this' for me. how that line sounds like some great piece of loss-romanticism to me i'm not quite sure... anyway; hard to listen to this nowadays due to its ubiquity...they even used it when england failed to deliver in the footy european championships over a slow motion montage of a once great nation's decline and fall...cutting amateurishly from 'success it never comes' to 'everything's ending here' just to ruin the light touch of the song with hammering obviousness.
used to love the drum rumble of the live version of this from 'slanted' through to touring 'crooked rain'. gave the song a very different, pulverising, sound. i would normally baulk at that but it worked brilliantly for 'here'. |
submissions
| Pavement – Folk Jam Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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the final spoken bit...the 'be as it may...' is brilliant. it's surely about how over the passage of time, acquaintances and 'people you have known and no longer know' just stack up; but there's a few others you measure yourself by - like we know ourselves better through the people we're close to. i think it's a great truth nailed in -until then- a relatively mediocre song. |
submissions
| Pavement – Fin Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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his voice is great on this. the second verse, culminating in 'i trust you will tell me if i am making a fool of myself' fucking kills me.
just a beautiful song; and with a quite staggering piece of malk-soloing for the last couple of minutes. just the solo manages to convey love and loss somehow, quite apart from the lyrics.
i have a home video from a few years ago where i was sitting in a car with this on the stereo. my then girlfriend had gone out to get something and it was a time at which i knew the relationship was about to go south. i was just filming the bright sunshine and waiting for her to get back in. somehow, music makes its moments; and that music was perfect in that moment.
...after all that introspection, anybody know why it's called 'fin' for the US but 'infinite spark' in the uk? |
submissions
| Pavement – Fillmore Jive Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i always thought it was 'the poseurs are so distracted'.
i love the fact that he manages to nail the minutiae -the jam kids on their vespas- whilst making the song sound so fucking apocalyptic, like the ground's cracking apart with it all... |
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| Pavement – Fame Throwa Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i would second juvenilecokefiend on that line... it's so rich. has me thinking of deep blues and golds. they always used to do the 'naked, naked...foul' bit really stupidly when they were touring 'slanted'... |
submissions
| Pavement – Billie Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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'Up to the one a kid,
Call the bluff when the money's in,
You're a hungry matron,
And you are just what I need,
I was tired of the best years of my life...' ...is great. just the right doseages of hope and ennui in his voice and lyrics. 'i was tired of the best years of my life' is as weary a line as i've ever heard. |
submissions
| Pavement – Billie Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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'Up to the one a kid,
Call the bluff when the money's in,
You're a hungry matron,
And you are just what I need,
I was tired of the best years of my life...' ...is great. just the right doseages of hope and ennui in his voice and lyrics. 'i was tired of the best years of my life' is as weary a line as i've ever heard. |
submissions
| Pavement – Greenlander Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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'greenlander' is fucking gorgeous. it is a sound for having been dumped and feeling sick in the pit of your stomach, whilst being outside in the beauty of it all and having a small shred of hope/defiance left somewhere.
that C9 chord (or whatever) after each line in the chorus is the saddest prettiest sound in pavement's canon.
i once saw on some other speculatory lyrics page that it was 'crills and lockets'. dunno what that would mean -always assumed malk coding- but i prefer it!
it's always sounded more like 'snap our children, we'll create' to me - maybe there's something wrong with me...
oh; and 'snow is ending' for me...he just carries the 's' over from 'is'. makes more sense to me - you can't thresh the snow when it's ending.
one of the many great things about pavement is that i've rarely bothered to unpick the code and seek meaning. somehow the combination of those guitars and 'we can bless the arrows...and the sun won't stall...and the land will never fall' sounds like beauty and defiance to me; and that's why it's great... |
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