Before Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain elevated the band to indie stardom, Pavement was just a pair of Fall fanatics with a drunken drummer, a fetish for historical contexts, and a respectable cult following. After Rain, Pavement became America's prototypical indie band -- slack, snarky smart alecks staggering majestically through country-rock thickets. The message here? That everything you want to believe in is an impermanent sham: the girl you're into this summer, the institution of marriage, the scene, your favorite band, your band, the coolness of "the queen of passing California thrills" and her Doc Martens ilk. Ten years out, this reissue gets the royal treatment, festooned with 37 tracks of completist crack -- alternate takes, compilation artifacts, hard-to-find B-sides. Highlights include "Fucking Righteous," on which singer Stephen Malkmus drunkenly chats up a lady while his and Scott Kannberg's junkyard guitars demolish the dive bar; the crispy-varmint-skin-topped funk bouillabaisse of "Bad Version of War"; and the smoldering, sinister "Haunt You Down."
