Pavement

What does a defiantly anti-corporate rock band do when it starts getting too much
attention? In Pavement's case, they recoil. After a few ambitiously experimental though
eminently tuneful releases – two singles and a 10-inch – for the tiny Drag City label,
Pavement produced something of a masterpiece with their Velvet Underground-inspired
first album, Slanted and Enchanted (1992). The Stockton, Calif., combo confirme... More >

Despite their disavowals of "progress," this proceeds as you'd figure--toward lyricism rather than commerciality or some such chimera. It's seldom hard or fast or chaotic, and if it was their sacred mission to humanize guitar noise, they've betrayed it like the reprobates they no doubt are. But if their vocation is beguiling song-music that doesn't sound like anything else or create its own rut, this reinforces one's gut feeling that they can do it forever. They can't, of course--nobody can. But the illusion of eternity has been music's sacred mission for a good long time. (Grade: A)