Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins
Compilation album by Pavement
Released October 26, 2004
Recorded Early 1993 – February 26, 1994
Genre Indie rock
Length 158:01
Label Matador, Domino
Pavement chronology
Slanted and Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe
(2002)		 Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins
(2004)		 Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition
(2006)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [1]
Pitchfork Media (10.0/10) [2]
Robert Christgau [3]
Rolling Stone [4]

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins is a double album by Pavement released on October 26, 2004. It contains the band's second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994) in its entirety, as well as 37 of the band's other songs from that era, 25 of which (the entire second disc) were previously unreleased. The album also contains a 62-page booklet of liner notes, which contain photographs, artwork, accounts from vocalist/guitarist Stephen Malkmus and guitarist Scott Kannberg (aka "Spiral Stairs"), and notes Malkmus wrote for Melody Maker about each of the songs on the original album. The liner notes also feature a surreal and sensationalistic "interview" between Matador's Gerard Cosloy and the fictitious "Rob Jurkface". According to Cosloy, he took questions by Pavement's biographer, Rob Jovanovic, changed them slightly, and wrote silly answers for them.

Some of the songs on the second disc ("Flux = Rad," "Kennel District", "Grounded" and "Pueblo") are early forms of songs on 1995's Wowee Zowee.

Shortly after the release of this set, a Matador employee posted corrected info regarding the recording sessions for the previously unreleased tracks on disc two. Tracks 2 through 8 and 13 through 21 were actually recorded at Gary Young's studio in Stockton (though Gary does not play on them; any drums were played by Spiral Stairs).

A further mistake is found in the track-listing on the back of the CD; Silence Kid is listed as Silence Kit, despite the interior artwork showing the correct name in print several times, including written in Stephen Malkmus's own handwriting. Some have pointed out that on Pavement's 2010 tour the song appeared on their set-list as "Silence Kit" (Set list), although it is not clear who typed the list, or if it was done as a joke.

Contents

Track listing

All tracks by Pavement

Disc One: "Back to the Gold Soundz (Phantom Power Parables)"

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
1. "Silence Kid" – 3:00
2. "Elevate Me Later" – 2:51
3. "Stop Breathin'" – 4:27
4. "Cut Your Hair" – 3:06
5. "Newark Wilder" – 3:53
6. "Unfair" – 2:33
7. "Gold Soundz" – 2:39
8. "5 - 4 = Unity" – 2:09
9. "Range Life" – 4:54
10. "Heaven Is a Truck" – 2:30
11. "Hit the Plane Down" – 3:36
12. "Fillmore Jive" – 6:38
"Cut Your Hair" single
13. "Camera" – 3:45 (R.E.M. Cover)
14. "Stare" – 2:51
"Range Life" single
15. "Raft" – 3:34
16. "Coolin' by Sound" – 2:50
"Gold Soundz" single
17. "Kneeling Bus" – 1:33
18. "Strings of Nashville" – 3:46
19. "Exit Theory" – 1:00
Gold Soundz Austral-N.Z. French Micronesia 94 Tour EP
20. "5 - 4 Vocal" – 2:08
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain bonus 7"
21. "Jam Kids" – 4:54
22. "Haunt You Down" – 4:51
No Alternative compilation
23. "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" – 3:51
Hey Drag City! compilation
24. "Nail Clinic" – 2:25

Disc Two: "After the Glow (Where Eagles Dare)"

Recorded in August and September 1993 at Random Falls in New York City
1. "All My Friends" – 5:12
Recorded in early 1993 at Louder Than You Think in Stockton, California
2. "Soiled Little Filly" – 2:08
3. "Range Life" – 4:11
4. "Stop Breathing" – 3:54
5. "Ell Ess Two" (aka "Loretta's Scars II", later renamed to "Elevate Me Later") – 2:44
6. "Flux = Rad" – 2:11
7. "Bad Version of War" – 3:27
8. "Same Way of Saying" – 4:35
Recorded in August and September 1993 at Random Falls in New York City
9. "Hands Off the Bayou" – 2:43
10. "Heaven is a Truck (Egg Shell)" – 2:20
11. "Grounded" – 3:35
12. "Kennel District" – 3:24
Recorded in early 1993 at Louder Than You Think in Stockton, California
13. "Pueblo (Beach Boys)" – 3:47
14. "Fucking Righteous" – 2:47
15. "Colorado" – 1:13
16. "Dark Ages" – 2:39
17. "Flood Victim" – 1:17
18. "JMC Retro" – 0:52
19. "Rug Rat" – 3:05
20. "Strings of Nashville (Instrumental)" – 3:50
21. "Instrumental" – 3:40
John Peel Session (Transmitted 26 February 1994)
22. "Brink of the Clouds" – 3:48
23. "Tartar Martyr" – 3:13
24. "Pueblo Domain" – 4:18
25. "The Sutcliffe Catering Song" – 3:22

Personnel

References

  1. ^ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins at Allmusic
  2. ^ Pitchfork Media, 26 October 2004
  3. ^ Robert Christgau review
  4. ^ Rolling Stone, 25 November 2004
Pavement
Studio albums
Compilations and reissues
EPs
Singles
"Summer Babe" • "Trigger Cut" • "Cut Your Hair" • "Gold Soundz" • "Range Life" • "Rattled by the Rush" • "Dancing with the Elders/Chemical" • "Father to a Sister of Thought" • "Stereo" • "Shady Lane" • "Spit on a Stranger" • "Carrot Rope"
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