Pavement
Major Leagues EP
[Matador]
Rating: 6.2
Pavement played my hometown back in October. It was the first time
I'd seen them. In fact, I bought my first Pavement album only weeks
before the show. How I managed to be a 25-year-old college graduate
that had never been into Pavement is a long and winding story, and I
will not get into it. Suffice it to say that I knew next to nothing
about the band as I walked into the theater. When I walked out, I knew
only a little more: I knew that Stephen Malkmus was a crazy motherfucker;
I knew the band had played a great show; I knew that the band sometimes
played really bad shows; and I knew that somehow Bob Nastanovich had
gotten my job.
While lingering outside as people filed out into the street, I noticed
that maybe one in five were softly humming "Major Leagues." Now, Pavement
had played a lot of songs-- oldies and crowd favorites alike-- and they'd
played "Major Leagues" about halfway through the set. But somehow that
was the song that stuck with people after they left the show. They milled
about on the sidewalk singing under their breath. They whistled the chorus
and bobbed their heads. They told each other that bad girls were always
bad girls, and they nodded in agreement and in time. Swinging from a
lamppost, my friend Ben serenaded the whole crowd with it, and soon people
joined in one by one, until we were all swaying in time, dancing on cars
and crashing our lager-filled steins together above our heads.
So, yes. "Major Leagues" is a great song. It's like Stephen Malkmus stops
being Mark E. Smith so that he can be Lloyd Cole for a while. It's almost
unquestionably the best song on Terror Twilight, and a great reason
to put out an EP like this one. And this is a good EP, too.
Now, as somebody relatively new to Pavement, I will freely admit that I
know not of which I speak. There's a lot of Pavement that I've not
heard. I have only a fuzzy idea of the difference between a Spiral
Stairs song and an S.M. song. I've read some other reviews of this EP,
and most have basically brushed it aside as tossed-off. Maybe those
people are right-- they are cooler than me, and they know more about
Pavement than I do.
For me, though, this EP was a great find. It's got everything an EP is
supposed to have: a radio edit of an album track, a goofy Casio-powered
demo of the same track, three original non-album songs (one of which
features Malkmus speaking French-- classic EP fodder), and two covers.
I guess it is pretty tossed-off, but excellently so.
Basically, I think an EP should do two things: give you a little extra
inexpensive treat to bring home from the record shop, and provide at
least two or three songs for a mix tape. This one succeeds in both
regards, and that's enough for me. Factor in the recent "hiatus" news
and the fact that this may well represent the end of Pavement's recording
career, and it becomes especially worth picking up.
-Zach Hooker