Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Pavement's second album is the one where the tape hiss cleared and the songs stepped forward. Released on Matador in February 1994, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was recorded the previous summer between Random Falls in New York City and Louder Than You Think in Stockton, California, with Steve West newly installed on drums in place of Gary Young. The band produced it themselves, and it turned a cult noise-pop act into the unlikely standard-bearers of American indie rock.

The trick was grafting a sun-damaged history of 1960s and '70s California folk-rock and psychedelia onto the scrappy racket of their debut. "Cut Your Hair" skewers music-industry careerism with a wordless hook that became the closest thing the band ever had to a hit. "Gold Soundz" is three minutes of pure summer melancholy, "Range Life" ambles through country rock while taking potshots at the alternative stars of the day, and the closing "Fillmore Jive" bids the rock and roll era goodnight in slow motion.

The album reached number 15 in the UK and number 121 on the Billboard 200, modest numbers that say little about its reach. It is widely regarded as the quintessential slacker rock record and one of the essential albums of the 1990s, with "Gold Soundz" often singled out as one of the decade's finest songs.

This Matador pressing puts all twelve tracks on a single LP. If you only own one Pavement record, there is a strong case for this one.