ALBUM (1992)

Pavement Slanted & Enchanted (Matador)

Rock music arrived at a significant turning point in the early 1990s. Grunge had put an end to the hair-metal excesses of the 80s and the likes of Nirvana led the charge that finally broke alternative through to the mainstream. Loud, noisy, distorted guitars were suddenly everywhere, and the airwaves were being dominated by Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and other similar chancers riding on the coat-tails of the grunge explosion.

Standing in stark contrast to all of this heroin-soaked angst were Pavement, a bunch of goofy guys who couldn't really play their instruments that well, but who changed the game by combining the dissonance of Sonic Youth's noisy art-rock with the sunny Californian melodies of the Beach Boys. On their debut album they created a rough masterpiece that laid the foundations for the lo-fi rock movement of the 90s, a path followed by the likes of Sebadoh and Beck.

Steven Malkmus and Scott Kannberg were two stoners from California who formed Pavement in 1989, soon taking on drummer Gary Young, an older ex-hippie with a drinking problem. In Young's home studio, the trio recorded several sloppy but charming lo-fi EPs before starting work on Slanted in 1991. By then, percussionist Bob Nastanovich and bassist Mark Ibold had also joined Pavement, but the album was recorded without them.

Even before Slanted & Enchanted was released, it was creating a huge buzz as it circulated on demo tape. And although it sounded like it was recorded on an old cassette player, it offered catchy hook after hook over a bedrock of dysfunctional songwriting and musicianship. Lyrics sometimes seem to be forgotten, obvious mistakes are left in the recording and Kannenberg plays the bass notes on a tuned-down guitar, but the album exudes a fantastically fuzzy charm that is almost impossible to dislike.

Malkmus delivers a range of obscure but whimsically poetic lines that would become one of Pavement's trademarks. As an example, from the ballad Here: 'I was dressed for success/ But success it never comes/ And I'm the only one who laughs/ When the jokes they are so bad/ And the jokes are always bad/ But they're not as bad as this.'