Speak, See, Remember

Breaking up is hard to do. You avoid it. You try to paint the breakup as a chance for new opportunities. No matter how you dance around it, it's inevitable. It will suck for one or both of you. There are no such things as good breakups.

Pavement had their breakup over Terror Twilight. Sure, there was a tour following, but it was a goodbye tour and TT was their goodbye album. I don't know how it affected the band members, but I know it was rough on the fans.

To cope, we turned to the things that got us through. We remembered the good times. We focused on future opportunities to make the best of these hard times. Pavement opened us up to many new bands. The breakup would at least leave us with a better perspective on the music landscape than we had before Pavement.

That and we waited for the reunion.

We've talked about this reunion for years, at least since the Pixies reunited (the first time). Soon, we'll see Pavement at Lollapalooza, in Central Park, at Coachella, or wherever they land. Then, we'll remember what those days in the mid-nineties were like.

"Speak, See, Remember" may not have intentionally been about Pavement's breakup, but it was about a breakup in a general sense. The album's title is mentioned. "Terror twilight" has been described as that ominous moment right before the sun sets. This track may very well have been that ghastly moment. Luckily, SM is there to assure us that it will be OK. I mean, he had a new album out in just over 18 months.

You Are a Light

"You Are a Light" is a love song. Pavement is not known for too many love songs, but this is certainly one, and the song is as Pavement a love song as there is.

The first verse describes a life in chaos. Anxiety is abundant thanks to our impending dependency on technology. (It was recorded in 1999.) The technology frustrates and confuses, making a return to the good old days and suicide our only options. At least SM has his light or to whomever he's singing.

Another scenario is described in the second verse where SM finds himself studying abroad, in Spain. Silly American/middle-class phobias of gypsy children and mortuary feasting consume him. Luckily, he has his love to shine the light to lead him home.

Things get downright sexual as the third verse begins. References to driving sticks and a lot of hollering close out the song.

SM repeats that he is "the isolator." An isolator is usually a switch that does what its name suggests: it isolates electrical current. The current in this case could be fro his light or in hopes of powering his light. Either way, this is as passionate as the usually monotone singer gets.

The music of the song is easy and jazzy through the first two verses, but rocks and breaks out after the second chorus with a typical Pavement-esque solo. This switch in intensity is carried into the third verse. Overall, besides the jazzy undertones, the arrangement is rather minimalist. The simplicity of the band's performance is augmented by various blips and electronic flourishes here and there, never more clearly heard than at the very end.

(Th performance below contains alternate lyrics from the track I reviewed. SM was known to mess with lyrics now and again.)

The Hexx

A hex (with one x) can stand for a couple of things. The first is the idea of a curse or spell that is placed on an individual or family by a witch. This can explain the lyrics of Pavement's "The Hexx".

The song carries on the theme of Terror Twilight of an impending doom. As stated many times in this here blog, the last Pavement record served notice that the band's run had come to an end, but that's getting redundant.

Malkmus describes various situations in which his subjects suffer from hexes of their own. Capistrano swallows that are supposed to return to their San Juan home, suddenly can't. Epileptic surgeons and fooled football players prepare as their failures are close at hand. One of the greatest Malk-metaphors demonstrates this point further.

Architecture students are like virgins with an itch they cannot scratch,
Never build a building till you're 50; what kind of life is that?

The 70's atmospherics support the gloom and doom of a hexed life. Bluesy guitar solos and wailing in the background set the mood of the track. One can picture a movie scene in which the protagonist is stumbling through a crowded hallway, intoxicated on some mind-altering substance, and dazed by his own failures as this music plays, drowning out the chaos around.

The other meaning to hex comes from a hexadecimal or a base-16 numbering system. Coincidentally, the song arguably has sixteen lines: five verses of two-lines each and a six-line chorus. Again, it's probably just a coincidence.

Spit on a Stranger

The spacey psychedelia of "Spit on a Stranger" opens up 1999's Terror Twilight, the final Pavement record, and listeners were bound to notice the change in the band's sound. The song's (and album's) first few seconds of drum beats almost start a different song altogether before warped guitar lines and a hippie-dippy bass line carry us to the first verse.

The song is a reflection on the band's long, tenuous relationship. This, in conjunction with the album's title referring to that eerie moment just as the sun sets, describes the strange feeling the one gets as the end approaches. You feel the end of the band as the record progresses.

The idea of "spit on a stranger" is an odd and cryptic one. (Of course, this is Pavement.) Just as the band's breakup (hell, their whole career) was awkward, spitting on a stranger can be just as strange. It's similar to accidentally grazing some one's rear or turning to make a comment to what you thought was your companion only to find a complete stranger standing there.

Ann Don't Cry

Pavement rarely recorded a straight-forward break-up song, but "Ann Don't Cry" is as close as they came (outside of "Here"). The song is a veiled metaphor for another metaphor of the band's reality. Let me explain...

The song uses the metaphor of dying in a hospital to depict a slow, bitter-sweet breakup. With references to damage being done, "hope in a wonderful hospital man", and rooms with very little...uh...room, SM eludes to a breakup that was avoided but now must be dealt with. Is Ann crying because she's ill or is the relationship finally coming to an end?

The breakup feels like the end of the band. Again, damage had been done. SM (as were a few other band mates) was not having fun in Pavement anymore. Were the five friends the members of Pavement? I don't know if this is what SM was thinking, but it sure feels like it. This was a farewell album, and "Ann Don't Cry" might be the farewell song.

The tone and instrumentation of the song supports these theories. SM's vocals are not only sad but as disappointing as always. I don't mean that literally; it's just how I've always thought about his vocal styling. The depressing tempo and steady beat repeat until the sad little song ends.

Folk Jam

I remember reading a review for Terror Twilight and how the jam band inside of Pavement, which had been festering for several years in their live act, was ready to unleash itself upon an unsuspecting fan base. References to Phish and the Grateful Dead were being thrown around. This was after the so-called "classic rock" ode that was Brighten the Corners was released in '97.

I don't care what the critics write. Pavement can never be labeled as "classic rock" or a "jam band". Sure, the band had classic moments and often liked to carry on a jam two or three minutes too long, but are they really compatible with the Dead or Zeppelin? I think not.

In their constant drive to define Pavement, critics attached these limiting labels to our heroes in order to make sense of why we love them. Maybe the fact that they were so undefinable makes them so beloved. I've been just as guilty of this as any real critic, but I've accepted that Pavement is just Pavement (with a nod to the Fall).

Regardless, the reviews and a song titled "Folk Jam" worried me. Were they literally trying to play a folky-jammy sort of mishmash? Was this their last hurrah of pot-induced folky, hippie jams? Of course not.

"Folk Jam" opens with this rolling tempo of guitars and drums that reminds one of a Garcia song until SM breaks in with his classically humorless delivery of a humorous tale. The protagonist wants something more out of his family history and life than what is there. The song celebrates the universal shortcomings of family. (This is either a jab SM's aging band mates or a lament of his own wasted life.)

The folky part primarily refers to the song's aesthetics, not so much the message. Despite the sound, your'e quickly reminded that this is a true Pavement song with lines like "Well, pardon my birth/I just slipped out" and "Beware the head of state says that she believes in leprechauns/Irish folktales scare the shit out of me". These have to be two of my favorite lines in their entire catalog.