"Can you treat it like an oil-well when it's underground, out of sight?" (Pavement)

"And if the sight is just a whore sign
Can it make enough sense to me? "

In The Mouth A Desert, Pavement



"Hard to choose from all the riches of the Slanted and Enchanted album. Am a massive believer in all of it though. I believe in a voice that squeaks for a generation of fragile and pissed-off flaneurs. I believe in cheap, scuzzy, squiggly guitars zipping around like pollocky streaks of strop. I believe in false starts (cf. 'Loretta's Scars'). I believe in the falsetto gibberish of a melodic bonbon: all those lovely woo-woo-woos ('In The Mouth A Desert') and sha-la-la-las ('Trigger Cut'). I believe in snazzy tunes that grow on you after the third (or fourth, or fifth) listen. But I also believe in a certain amount of deranged howling (cf. 'Conduit For Sale', and the neurotic 'Chesley's Little Wrists'). I believe in titles that have (seemingly) nothing to do with the songs they're appended to. I believe in dippy, fleshwound lyrics that make more sense than senescence. I believe in the lackadaisical (at least as an idea). I believe in the effortless, induplicate coil of fiddle-faddle. I believe in drummers who are more interested in standing on their heads and serving french toast to their fans than snapping their snares (cf. Gary Young). I believe in combining West Coast serenity with East Coast sarcasm: 'I'm the only one who laughs/At your jokes when they are so bad/And your jokes are always bad...' I believe in the soul as part of the whole megillah, off the cuff, but swift as a kissing bug: 'I've got one-only life to live/I've got one-only life to give.' I believe in beginnings that that are also endings and vice-versa ('Everything's ending here', sings Malkmus on the ninth track, when in fact, if rumours are to be believed, three albums later, everything's ending here. Wherever that is. ) I believe in cool Italians. Not cool as in de rigueur Rigid-Cool (all Armani shades and slicked back pubes), but cool as in Claudio Galuzzi Cool, my first Musical Guru, who in 1992 who sold me this album from his little shop in Casalpusterlengo saying it would 'shake my cack, kedgeree constellations' (you lose something in translation). And it did. It made me a believer. Believe me."

For Steve (29 and 3/4 years old).