Pavement - Watery, Domestic

Four songs, eleven and a half minutes, and not a second wasted. Released on Matador in November 1992, just months after Slanted and Enchanted made Pavement the most talked-about band in the underground, Watery, Domestic is the EP that many fans will tell you is the single best thing the group ever put to tape.

Recorded at Louder Than You Think in Stockton, California, it catches the band at a hinge point. It is the last Pavement release with original drummer Gary Young behind the kit, and the first recording to feature Bob Nastanovich and Mark Ibold, who had already joined the touring lineup. The sound is cleaner and more confident than the debut without losing any of its crooked charm. "Texas Never Whispers" lurches in on a wall of fuzz, "Frontwards" swaggers through one of Stephen Malkmus's great deadpan choruses, "Feed 'Em to the Lions (Linden)" is a blast of gleeful noise, and "Shoot the Singer" closes things on a note of real, unguarded beauty.

The songs have had a long afterlife. "Frontwards" has been covered by Los Campesinos! and Hamilton Leithauser, and Placebo sampled "Texas Never Whispers." The title, according to Nastanovich, is a nod to his fondness for light American beer, and the rooster on the sleeve was lifted from a defaced copy of an old Ambergris LP.

This Matador reissue is a 12-inch EP cut at 45 RPM, two songs to a side. Small, cheap and close to perfect.