Fluxblog 363: Pavement • Broadcast • Destroyer • Father John Misty
Plus a chill and sexy new playlist in the Place Series
This week’s playlist is PLACE SERIES #5 LOBBY LOUNGE SUITE, an atmospheric mix of R&B, trip hop, instrumental hip-hop, and other music that has a low-key glamorous, relaxed, and sexy vibe. I’m very fond of this one! [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Part four of the Fluxpod Patreon exclusive miniseries OTT FUTURE, will be out on Saturday. This is a series about the intersection of technology and music culture from a few different angles. Subscribe now to hear it, and all the other miniseries and shows I have available for subscribers.
The World Is Mainly Divorces And Spare Change
Pavement “You Are A Light” (Live in NYC 1999)
Pavement was a restlessly creative band through the majority of their existence between 1989 and 1999, so the previous four deluxe reissues of their albums were stacked with non-album songs and unreleased material that was mostly of very high quality. Stephen Malkmus was moving so fast and with so much confidence that a lot of songs that would be the best thing a lot of bands could ever hope to write were relegated to b-sides or totally cast aside and left unfinished. But with Terror Twilight there’s really not a lot of extra songs and so the extra material on this reissue is very focused on charting the progress of the songwriting from demo to rehearsal to revision, and ultimately how some of the songs changed on stage. It’s very interesting but not tremendously listenable, and certainly not for anyone but the most obsessive fans.
Listening in on process is demystifying, and Pavement is a band that really thrives on mystique. There’s one demo in this set for “Billie” that actually kinda wrecks something I’ve cherished for a long time, a live recording of that song in St. Louis in which Malkmus seems to freestyle an entire perfectly formed verse off the top of his head. But no, it wasn’t off the top of his head, it was just a verse from the original draft that he’d replaced. I guess it’s cool to know that, but the idea that he could improvise so well was both rooted in plenty of other evidence supporting this and also just a fun thing to hold on to. It’s like finding out that sometimes Michael Jordan was getting lifted up on wires to slam dunk.
One of the most interesting songwriting journeys documented on this reissue is the gradual evolution of “You Are A Light” culminating in a live recording from a show I actually attended at Irving Plaza in Manhattan. As a tape collector it’s never been news to me that “You Are A Light” is best as a live song, nor has its origins been a mystery to me – there’s other early versions of the song that are not included here, including one that has the line variation “you..are a Sprite drinker…” that I always sorta anticipate in any version of the song. This set fills in a lot of steps along the way, including an extra long rendition laid down at Larry Crane’s Jackpot studio. I appreciate the lyrical variations as Malkmus improvises his way through rehearsal, particularly “I opened up my mouth, out came the words you despised.” But the magic doesn’t really happen for the song until Malkmus fully works out how the guitar parts fit together and how to really land the solo. By the time they lay it down with Nigel Godrich the song is perfectly formed, but on stage it gets a little more room to breathe. The song truly has some of the most beautiful guitar parts he’s ever written.
“You Are A Light” is one of a few songs on Terror Twilight where Malkmus is obviously sabotaging his lyrics a bit because he can sense the music wants to be more overtly sentimental than he was comfortable being at the time. You can hear him struggling with this in all the variations as he gradually edits out everything that seems like a song about a relationship in favor of telling a story about a weird senior trip abroad and nudging the chorus away from the far more romantic “you are the light becoming the day.” Since this song exists in many forms I don’t really mind that he ran away from the more open-hearted lines even if I actually favor them, and I think shrinking away from sentimentality was very honest and as a relatable impulse in and of itself. He wouldn’t be as afraid of it today, and hearing him be more open in later material is part of what makes having a long term fascination with an artist a fulfilling experience. They grow, you grow, and perspective shifts. I feel like I’ve been on all sides of this song at this point, and I’ve got a lot out of every version of it. I hope they play it on the tour this year so maybe I can get some new variations on it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
My Room’s Too Small For Parties
Broadcast “Lights Out” (Evening Session 1997)
The studio recording of “Lights Out” on Work and Non Work is lovely but relative to this live session recording it feels colder and more distant. To put in terms from the song’s lyrics the studio version feels as though you’re the stranger on the other side of the glass as Trish Keenan waves to you, and this Evening Session version feels like you’re right there with her in her lonely little room. The recording implies intimacy, but only in terms of proximity as Keenan still seems aloof and unknowable as she sings about a loneliness and boredom so pervasive in her character’s life that it hardly even sounds melancholy. It’s more like an emotional equilibrium in which circumstances don’t seem likely to improve, but they’re tolerable enough as far as available options go. Keenan sings as though vague disappointment was simply the baseline of all feeling, and the music somehow conveys a drab existence while also sounding quite fascinating and stylish in the approximate musical equivalent of mid-century modern furnishings.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Another Way Of Saying Goodbye
Destroyer “It Takes A Thief”
Labyrinthitis mostly provides the sort of things we’ve come to expect to hear on Destroyer records: New Order-ish synthpop rendered entirely in overcast tones, some atmospheric guitar songs that feels like a fantasy of a romantic experience, and lots of Dan Bejar doing his wry Dan Bejar thing. (I am particularly fond of how he delivers the line “Now, what do you call it when every part of said bird is used?” with total gleeful depravity.) “It Takes A Thief” is the surprising outlier, a bright and groovy number that somehow gracefully contrasts sophistipop touches with slapstick sound effects over a chunky bass line. It’s a song that probably would’ve fit in well on a New Pornographers record in tonal terms, though I think bringing more harmony to this may defeat some of its charm. I like the way Bejar sounds silly and playful here, like he’s the bewildered star of a comedy about a band that takes itself very seriously.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
A Square Foot Of Empire
Father John Misty “The Next 20th Century”
“The Next 20th Century” is a song only Father John Misty could write. In fact, it may be the most “Father John Misty” song he’s written, the one where he perfects his very particular way of stacking a world weary cynicism upon dark humor and sick ironies without it collapsing in on itself or negating the very sincere longing and despair at the center of it all. He’s practically daring the listener to take him the wrong way from the opening line, but if you make it through to the concluding verse his POV is very clear: This is someone who sees the same old tragedies in each new disaster and doesn’t believe there’s any real escape from the world we’ve all been making for centuries on end. Even romance and fantasies are infected by the rot, even the purest true love is burdened by the weight of historical context. “And now things keep getting worse while staying so eerily the same,” he sings, really getting to the bitter core of the song. Everyone is waiting for some brutal apocalypse, but we never get the punishment we crave. It’s worse to live in the anticipation.
There’s a deliberate cinematic quality to the arrangement “The Next 20th Century,” with little nods to westerns and melodramas along the way. The song is aiming for a very 20th century sort of grandeur, but true to concept, the song itself sounds more like an endless plateau rather than some dramatic vista. The instrumental spaces between verses are the most striking musical elements of the piece, particularly in how each verse is punctuated with a very different sound. After the first time, it’s a glorious and melodic string sequence. After the second time, it’s a thunderous distorted guitar solo. The space between the third and fourth verses is mostly just a simple keyboard part plinked out in a way that makes it sound very small and tinny in the middle of this grandiose track. It’s a very effective moment of calm but also something that foreshadows the feeling of impotence expressed in the following verse.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
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• Stuart Berman wrote a long and very good oral history of Pavement’s Terror Twilight for Pitchfork. It is so good that it actually contains a fair amount of information that me, an obsessive Pavement nerd for nearly 30 years, did not know.
• Brittany Spanos reviewed Olivia Rodrigo’s first proper show for Rolling Stone. I truly love the fact that she’s covering Veruca Salt’s “Seether” on this tour and can’t believe I never once thought to connect that song to what she does. It’s like part of her source code!