Riddle Me This
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>>MUSIC DISCS tysomething adulthood, elusive solo R.E.M. has carried on as a “three- careers (or Korea, if you prefer) and legged dog,” as Stipe famously put it. Riddle Me This horse-race handicapping. Matador Aside from the intriguing foray in- has begun releasing 10th-anniversary to electronic ambience and Pet Reckoning Crooked Rain Crooked Rain = Around the Sun? bonus-track reissue editions of Sounds exotica of 1999’s post-Berry ÷ Pavement’s early canon. Following Up, you could be forgiven for con- By Jonathan Valania [email protected] 2002’s Slanted reissue comes the cluding, based on the albums that snazzy Crooked Rain version 2.0, came after—the flat-soda pop of complete with all the attendant B- 2001’s Reveal and the unrelentingly Twenty years ago—let’s just pause and think about that for a sec, 20 years ago— sides of the era and 25 unreleased midtempo mopery of the just-out tracks of beer-soaked basement jams, Around the Sun—that the dog don’t R.E.M. released Reckoning. It was the much-anticipated sophomore release by high-guy odes to Smile-era Beach hunt so good anymore. Boys and the Jesus and Mary Chain, Once you get past the lovely, elegiac the underground’s then-favorite sons of the South. The album made good on cool demo takes of Crooked tunes and folk-pop of the album-opening the kudzu-crusted promise of the band’s bewitching and ultimately confound- embryonic versions of songs that “Leaving New York,” Sun’s first sin- would wow on Wowee Zowee, the al- gle, things bog down quickly. Much ing debut Murmur, radiating a murky but hopeful aura to an alt-world grown bum that came after. of the blame can be laid at the feet of Ten years later not one drop of Stipe, who lost his Delphic aura back weary of punk’s safety-pinned doom and goth’s spider web of gloom. Crooked Rain’s hook-filled charm in the late ’80s when he traded in- cantation for “I’m the sun and you can read,” they clarity and you sang, or at least that’s what it sound- could actually ed like—you never knew for sure make out what back then, and that proved to be an the hell he was awful lot of their charm. And in the singing. jingle-jangle morning of Reagan’s I liked him America, we came following them. better when he Reckoning was full of secret maps just pretended and sepia-tinted legends, the autum- to be deep in- nal ring of Rickenbacker guitars and stead of actual- the mesmerizing moon-river moan ly trying to be. of Michael Stipe, delivering the Too many promised fables of classic rock’s sty- songs on Sun— listic reconstruction to a post-punk all tastefully world of shattered expectations, colored with asymmetrical haircuts and skinny piano tinklings, black pants. babes, fruit-covered nails and has evaporated. The elbows thrown keyboard washes and gilded folk Reckoning contained multitudes, Loretta’s scars. at Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing pluck, mind you—sound like the alluding to the Byrds and the Velvet Slanted and Enchanted made Pumpkins, which raised hackles working script to some bad Sofia Underground, mining the back- Pavement the toast of indieland, and back in the day when the indie-vs.- Coppola movie in which the hip woods mysticism of Southern folk art the rock literati soon dubbed its boy- major-labels debate had the suicidal young protagonists languish melan- and wedding it to love-beaded mid- ish members—with their precisely intensity of a jihad, now seem as cholically in fading romances set ’60s folk rock to create a new atlas of wrinkled shirt tails, stoner smirks harmless as the Pavement boys al- against an international jet-set back- blue-highway Americana. All across and deep-well knowledge of rock- ways insisted. I mean, really: Billy drop of high-speed trains and chic the nation, red-eyed sophomores snob ephemera—alt-rock’s most ele- Corgan? Scott Weiland? Like I could restaurants. “Your rope trick started clustered Indian-style around the gant and eligible bachelors. really. Give a. Fuck. looking stale,” sings Stipe on “Boy in dim glow of dorm-room lava lamps, In 1994—having switched coasts, And “Range Life,” the rollicking the Well,” and he could well be separating seeds from stems, trying trading suburban California sun for country rocker from which those singing to the man in the mirror. to decipher Stipe’s cryptic utterances. miles and miles of New York style— aforementioned elbows were I’ve seen R.E.M.’s world up close, Pavement released Crooked Rain thrown, emerges as Pavement’s and it’s all five-star hotels that recycle Stephen Malkmus and Scott Crooked Rain, the much-anticipated defining moment, a reminder of a and solar-powered limousines. And sophomore LP by the underground’s Kannberg were two of those stoned time when Malkmus’ obfuscating I’d never begrudge those guys the then-favorite sons of the city. sophomores passing the peace pipe snark and grad-student sarcasm right to get stinkin’ rich from the Shockingly tuneful and self- in the warm wigwam of early-’80s burned off like morning fog to reveal high art they were capable of trans- assured, Crooked Rain contained college radio. A photogenic pair of a shining path of sincerity. That’s muting rock into when they were at 2004 multitudes, alluding to the Fall and smart-alecky sun-kissed California foxy to me—is it foxy to you? the height of their powers—or even boys turned indie rock hobbyists, R.E.M., mining the majesty of rock Included in those Crooked Rain 6, and cutting it with irony, enigma just stinkin’ drunk on airplanes. But Malkmus and Kannberg put down bonus tracks is a B-side ode to 0-2 they’re millionaires locked in a bub- 2 the soccer ball and picked up guitars, and slacker ennui to create a new R.E.M. called “Unseen Power of the ble of climate-controlled luxury, long bestowing cryptic nicknames on covenant for a Lollapalooza nation Picket Fence,” in which Malkmus in- ER each other—S.M. and Spiral Stairs, growing increasingly weary of the removed from the heat and friction tones the names of songs from OB of ordinary lives that make for music respectively—and trafficking in macho gigantism of grunge’s vein- Reckoning. There is also a squint- worth listening to. noise and ambiguity to fill the void of popping flannel angst. and-you-can-recognize-it pisstake of OCT In the end you have to choose be- >> melody and hooks that were still “Songs mean a lot when songs are Reckoning’s twilight mood-piece tween the mansion on the hill or the some years in the offing. bought, and so are you,” Malkmus “Camera.” Recording under the nom de rock sang. All across the nation, red-eyed art in the streets. And the only time Pavement, they released a pile of sophomores clustered Indian-style Thankfully, 20 years into an im- the twain shall meet is when art is spazzy, dust-bunny-on-the-needle 7- around the dim glow of dorm-room pressive career in rock, R.E.M. hung over the sofa in the mansion on inch singles, culminating in 1992’s lava lamps, separating seeds from doesn’t sound nearly as shambolic, the hill. That’s a gross overstatement, Slanted and Enchanted, a bewitch- stems, trying to decipher Malkmus’ but the new Around the Sun finds of course, but that doesn’t change the ing but ultimately confounding de- cryptic utterances. the band sounding a little weary fundamental fact that when you get but that resonated with lo-fi crackle, from the chores of enchantment. to a certain tax bracket and the zip hiss and pretty pop, not to mention Fast-forward to 2004. Pavement With the late-20th-century depar- code that comes with it, you can’t go PHILADELPHIA WEEKLY jigsaw-puzzle visions of summer has long since disbanded into thir- ture of charter drummer Bill Berry, back to Rockville again. ■ 47 >>MUSIC DISCS ’80s U2’s anthemic pieties had funny. Because U2 should be doing grown insufferably self-serious. commercials for Apple. Because I The BombSquad Because in the early ’90s U2 learned dare you to name two other artsy the importance of not being earnest. commercial entities with their com- Because Bono told Rolling Stone: bined mega-unit-moving stature Why you should buy the new U2 album. “I’ve learned to be insincere. I’ve that are quantifiably trying to change learned to lie. I’ve never felt better!” things for the better. By Jonathan Valania [email protected] Because Achtung Baby was the Because, as Bono sings on “Miracle sound of four men chopping down Drug,” “freedom has a scent like the Because some bands have greatness what it does best: rattle and hum. The Joshua Tree, and it was even top of a newborn baby’s head,” and thrust upon them and other bands Because in the greed-is-good ’80s, better than the real thing. don’t let anyone, not even the presi- thrust greatness upon themselves. speaking out about faith and hope Irish eyes: Because all the cyber-punk theoriz- dent of the United States, tell you Because U2 knew that if they had it and sex and dreams and peace on Because despite ing and dystopian consumerist bur- that some people hate the scent of a both ways, they could be bigger than earth was a thankless job.