212 - Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is another one of those albums that just kind of slipped by me while I was exploring the depth and breadth of college rock/alternative in the first half of the 90's. I heard the album and respected the band, but I never felt compelled to spend much of my own time diving into their music. They were a band that my friends played.

The music on Crooked Rain is sloppy, low-tech, and American. The foundation is California pop with its sunny attitude, occasional Western music influences, and idylic lyrical imagery. Now imagine that foundation as weathered, vandalized, and abused - that is what the listener gets on this album. Despite the messiness, there are indications here in there that the band put more thought into creating and structuring these songs than is readily evident. Thus, my opinion of Crooked Rain is all over the place. There are many songs that have elements I find very interesting or fun. But each of those songs also have elements that made me go, "Why?" The experimentation and quirkiness wasn't conducive to my settling on likes and dislikes, but I can see how someone who is more interested than I could chew on this morsel for a very long time.

Songs I Knew I Liked: "Cut Your Hair"

Songs I Now Like: "Unfair," "5-4=Unity" (love the Brubeck-esque jazz!), and I kinda like "Silence Kid" and "Hit the Plane Down"

Songs I Can Go the Rest of My Life Never Hearing Again: "Stop Breathin" and "Fillmore Jive"

211 - Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here is a great example of a collection of music that works best when heard as a whole. Essentially, what you have is one HUGE song that is cut in half and put at the beginning and end of the album with three shorter (but still 5+ minutes long) songs in between.

While Syd's rise and fall in the music industry is the obvious inspiration for much of the lyrics; musically, the album is clearly focused on absence. The listener seems to have to travel for a while at the beginning of the album to reach the music and then the lyrics of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)". David's guitar solos and the synths seem like a lazy river or breeze carrying us long distances. The segue into "Wish You Were Here" and acoustic guitars bring to mind a Wild West scene of wind whipping through a ghost town. Even the two music industry songs bring up absence - loss of art for sake of profit, the soulless labels and entertainment industry hucksters, feeling lost from yourself, and possibly even losing control of your very life.

Songs I Knew I Liked: "Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)" and "Wish You Were Here"

Songs I Now Like: Nothing new

Songs I Can Go the Rest of My Life Never Hearing Again: I'm being a bit picky, but I've never been all that fond of either "Welcome to the Machine" or "Have a Cigar." When they show up when I'm shuffling music, I almost always skip them but I enjoy them as a portion of listening to Wish You Were Here as an album.