Brighten The Corners (CD)

STAFF PICK: " You cannot fault a classic like this. One of my all time favourite albums. Effortless sounding melodies and the well-loved guitar tones accompanied by Malkmus' unique voice and disorganised lyrics will have you unable to resist playing this on repeat." - Lucia

For a band that often seemed be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough, Pavement made all the right moves-- they just did them in the wrong order. With its crystalline production (courtesy of R.E.M. architect Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin) and more refined songcraft, Pavement's 1997 release‚Brighten the Corners‚was the logical follow-up to 1994's indie hit‚Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. But of course, that move from A to B took a tangential turn back to Z with 1995's notoriously slapdash‚Wowee Zowee, an album beloved by the band's diehard fans, but one that effectively squandered any crossover potential‚Crooked Rain‚might have built up (and which would've made a lot more sense as‚Crooked Rain's predecessor than successor).‚

Brighten the Corners' more focused, melodic approach could thus be heard as the sound of Pavement making amends, but it arguably came too late-- by 1997, modern-rock radio was already tuning out brainy indie-rock in favour of pre-fab pop-punk and numbskull nu-metal. Pavement understood this shift all to well, which could be why‚ Brighten the Corners‚sounds like their most self-aware and, by extension, honest album-- when Stephen Malkmus yells, "listen to me, I'm on the stereo!" on the album's excitable opening track, it's with the implicit knowledge that he'd have to settle for hearing himself on his home hi-fi rather than on KROQ.

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