Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

Pavement: “Crooked Rain Crooked Rain” (Big Cat)

You may be familiar with the single ‘Cut Your Hair’ from this album, and if so, you’ll probably like the way its jubilant ‘woo woo’ chorus, disparaging comments about drummers and admonitions against getting a haircut just to please a demanding boyfriend make you feel like smiling in a lazy, lopsided sort of fashion.

That said, there aren’t a whole lot of songs on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain that could have qualified as singles. It’s not that Pavement lack tunes – they’re oozing with them – it’s just that the band members occasionally show some reluctance to play the same tune at the same time, particularly obvious when it sounds like they’ve got a whole busload of guitarists sprawled around the studio. They don’t so much jam, as mush.

When everything does come together though, the results are inspired. Sloppy, yes, strangely familiar, indubitably (‘5 - 4 = Unity’ is ‘Take Five’, pure and simple and ‘Silence Kid’ is a half-arsed, brilliant, bumbling echo of Buddy Holly’s ‘Everyday’), but loveable in the same unavoidable way as, say, those scruffy, ownerless old dogs that spend their days ambling after complete strangers and chasing rocks are loveable. They just sort of belligerantly chew through every defence mechanism, till you feel like you don’t want to live without them.

The Dinosaur Jr comparisons are still applicable, mainly reflected through the way Steve Malkmus manages to evoke the image of someone singing and shrugging non-commitally at the same time. ‘Unfair’ is his shining moment here; a raucous, overwhelming song that culminates with him ranting and screaming like a very pissed-off Black Francis.

The irresistible ‘Gold Soundz’ combines rusty nostalgia(“So drunk in the August sun and you’re the kind of girl I like/Because you’re empty and I’m empty and you can never quarantine the past.”) with the very finest in gee-tar tunes while ‘Range Life’ is twee, cheesy country and should be huge if only because of the lines “Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins/Nature kids, they don’t have no function/I don’t understand whay they mean and I couldn’t really give a fuck.”

‘Hit The Plane Down’ and ‘Fillmore Jive’ are comparatively pointless and gormless but even loveable scruffy old dogs are prone to making a mess sometimes.

A big shaggy record. Responds well to lots of attention and frequent scratches behind the ear.

• Lorraine Freeney