Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins
PAVEMENT
Matador
Released in February of 1994, Pavement's second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, displayed the limitless ability of the band to gather numerous disparate strands and churn out work that to this day sounds fresh. The record spills out august pop, lovely guitar playing, and ream after ream of some of the best lyrics ever recorded. How many other bands can manage a Dave Brubeck homage, a rhythmic post-punk freak-out, and a sprawling classic rock jam, not just on the same album but on the same back end of an album? This double CD expands on the original, amassing 37 extra tracks that further demonstrate Pavement's awesome powers. There are many new gems to be discovered: the usual B-sides, outtakes, early versions of songs that made the cut, and studio nonsense. Some, in all honesty, are for hardcore fans only, particularly late in the game on disc two, but this certainly doesn't detract from the set's overall power. The original songs, despite the yellowing of years, still comprise such life-changing music it's impossible to overstate their quality. Lead singer Stephen Malkmus attacked false prophets, but didn't make the mistake of replacing them with himself. Instead, the songs are about growing up, staring down self-doubt and resisting conformity. There's no way I can avoid the hyperbole right now: your life is incomplete if you've never driven through a buzzing summer sunset with Rain blaring from your speakers. 
—COOPER LANE BAKER
Never Breathe What You Can't See
JELLO BIAFRA WITH THE MELVINS
Alternative Tentacles
Just in time for the postpartum shivers following this year's election comes another ball-peen hammer to the forehead. This latest offering from controversial former Dead Kennedys frontman Biafra (backed here by grunge godfathers The Melvins) is definitely a step in the right direction — in terms of dissidence and dissonance. There are a few muscular anthems toward the front ("Plethysmograph" and "Yuppie Cadillac") and these most resemble the DK catalog, a body known for its unrelenting ham-fistedness. And considering the musical changes in punk rock over the last 10 years, most of Biafra's four-chord gems end up making AFI sound like Blue Oyster Cult. Biafra inevitably waxes politically paranoid ("Islamic Bomb" and standout track "McGruff the Crime Dog") and even "borrows" lyrics from a surely unsuspecting J. Ashcroft. However, the album really comes to life when Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne takes the composer's chair and Biafra is challenged to adapt his lyrics to slower and lengthier sections of music. Honorable mention goes to Melvins producer Toshi Kasai of Los Angeles' Hook Studios, who has given Biafra's vocals a quality that's more Jagermeister than razorblades. Maybe the ultimate revelation is that Biafra's lyrics become less and less paranoid as more of them keep coming true. 1/2
—JORAN OPPELT
Rendezvous
LUNA
Jetset
Dean Wareham sure does sound happy to be putting one of the most successful cult-hip second acts in indie-rock history to bed. Formed in 1992, after the demise of the singer/songwriter/guitarist's beloved Galaxie 500, Luna went 12 years and six studio full-lengths without ever completely abandoning the particularly evocative (some would say pretentious), deceptively minimalist ambiance and vocal and lyrical cool of that earlier underground favorite. Sunshine, unshakable melodies and amused melancholy became fairly regular visitors at some point, but nowhere has Luna been as consistently upbeat and vaguely rootsy as on Rendezvouz, the new album widely reported to be the band's last. It's a very California record by a very New York City band, one that strives to emit a sunny, summerland vibe, but can't completely shake its innate, self-conscious fascination with small, shiny, fashionable shoegaze-pop accessories. And that's fine, because the middle ground where these two disparate attitudes meet doesn't get visited enough. Maybe the band will send another postcard from there at some unspecified time in the future. (www.jetsetrecords.com) 1/2
—Scott Harrell
A Treasury
NICK DRAKE
Universal Chronicles
Nick Drake released the last of his three albums the year I graduated high school — 1972. Yet I never listened to his music until a few months ago, with the unwitting exception of "Pink Moon" in a Volkswagen commercial. Why this is, I don't exactly know — I certainly heard my share of sensitive singer-songwriter fare at that point, but perhaps I didn't have quite enough Anglophile in me to seek out Nick Drake. His death in '74, widely held to be a suicide from an overdose of antidepressants (how's that for irony?), did not have the immediate effect of bringing him commercial cachet. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that Drake caught on as a buzzy cult artist, spurring a wave of musicians to name-check him as an influence. Why did it take another 10 years for me to catch on? Again, I can't really say. But I'm making up for lost time. These days, like any good convert, I'm a true zealot. A Treasury gathers 15 of the late artist's songs in Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) format, which also plays on standard CD players. Because Drake's music is not tattooed on my gray matter like, say, "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" or Neil Young's Harvest or Joni Mitchell's Blue, each listen to his songs has the promise of new discovery. What's to like? His laconic, breathy voice that retained traces of his British accent; his facile work on acoustic guitar, rhythmically astute, orchestral but not flashy; the scope of his arrangements, from lone guitar to stately string and horn charts; his probing, introspective lyrics marked by a sense of timelessness; most of all, his songs, with their heady, jazz-inflected chords and gorgeous melodies. The book on Nick Drake's music is that it's sad, lonely, desperate, but I hear an element of joy and celebration in his work — not lampshade-on-the-head revelry, but a subdued aura of love, a quiet wisdom that's actually life-affirming. It's more rainy day music than razor-to-wrist music.
—ERIC SNIDER
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2004.