AMG Review of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Pavement's expanded double-disc 2002 reissue of Slanted & Enchanted -- dubbed Luxe & Reduxe in its deluxe incarnation -- was a landmark for expanded reissues, not just because it was the first time an indie rock band was subjected to such an exhaustive exhumation of the vaults, but because it was excellent in both its execution and material. Peel Sessions, heavily bootlegged live concerts, B-sides, and EPs were collected on a package that raised the bar on reissues of '90s alt-rock classics. Since its release, few have attempted to meet that standard, let alone match it -- Universal's double-disc excavations of Sonic Youth's Dirty and Weezer's first album come close -- but it wasn't until Pavement reissued an expanded edition of their 1994 second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, on its tenth anniversary that there was another alt-rock reissue as satisfying as Luxe & Reduxe. Subtitled "L.A.'s Desert Origins" -- somewhat of a non sequitur since the album was recorded in New York -- this double-disc set adds 37 bonus tracks to the original 12-track album, rounding up all the stray tracks from 1994, plus a Peel Session from around the time of the album's February release and a whole bunch of previously unreleased material, including the scrapped initial sessions for the album featuring original drummer Gary Young.

Where Luxe & Reduxe was largely comprised of recordings well known to diehards, L.A.'s Desert Origins contains a slew of unheard music, all presented on the second disc, titled "After the Glow (Where Eagles Dare)." The bonus material on the first disc -- titled "Back to the Gold Soundz (Phantom Power Parables)" -- consists of all the previously released Crooked Rain-era non-LP material: B-sides, bonus 7"s, tribute tracks, tour EPs, and cuts from various-artist samplers. This material isn't as strong on a song-by-song level as the stray tracks from Slanted & Enchanted, but cuts like "Raft" and "Coolin' By Sound" are solid B-sides, the "Jam Kids"/"Haunt You Down" single deserves to be heard by a wider audience, and the two R.E.M.-related songs -- a mournful cover of "Camera" and the wryly brilliant tribute "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence" taken from the No Alternative album -- are rather brilliant; plus, it's also interesting to hear a vocal take of "5 - 4" (even if it does make it too busy).

For diehards, it's nice to have all this material collected on one disc, but the real appeal of the set is that second disc, which contains no less than 21 previously unreleased tunes. The first eight consist of the shelved sessions with Young, which pretty much sound like rough demos when compared to either the finished album or Slanted & Enchanted. Listen to how fluid "Range Life," "Elevate Me Later" (here titled "Ell Ess Two"), and "Stop Breathing" sound on the finished album compared to the good but flat versions here, and it's easy to understand why Young was fired and these songs were recut. That said, there are some excellent things from these sessions -- "All My Friends" and "Soiled Little Filly" are promising songs that would have made good B-sides, an early version of "Flux = Rad" rocks really hard, the instrumental "Bad Version of War" has an intoxicatingly insistent fuzz guitar refrain, and "Same Way of Saying" recalls the haunted vibe of Creedence Clearwater Revival ballads (even if Malkmus comments that he "kind of feels like Hüsker Dü on this one"). After these early sessions are wrapped up, there are 13 outtakes from the New York sessions that lead to the final album. Some of this is little more than instrumental noodlings -- interesting noodlings, as on the synth-heavy "Colorado" -- while some of these are alternate takes of songs that wound up on the album, on B-sides, or on Wowee Zowee. Of those, the tracks that fall into the latter category are the most interesting, since "Kennel District" sounds like a closer cousin to "Loretta's Scars" in this incarnation and "Grounded" is disarmingly different here -- lighter, faster, and not nearly as somber and stately. Of the unheard songs, the slow heavy groove of "Hands Off the Bayou" is the strongest, but "Fucking Righteous" is a fun, fast throwaway (and a harbinger to the latter-day "I Wanna Mess Around") and "Rug Rat" is engagingly silly.

Finally, the set closes with the aforementioned Peel Session from February 1994. At the time, all of these four songs were unreleased, but over the next year, "Pueblo Domain" would work its way onto Wowee Zowee while both "Brink of the Clouds" and "The Sutcliffe Catering Song" (later retitled "Easily Fooled") would show up as studio-recorded B-sides, leaving the Scott Kannberg's solid "Tartar Martyr" as the only unfamiliar title. While not quite as infectious as the Peel Sessions captured on Luxe & Reduxe, this is still loose and engaging, an excellent way to end a reissue that's not only remarkably generous, but remarkably entertaining. There may be a throwaway or two tucked away in the outtakes on the second disc, but even those have a ramshackle charm, and the entirety of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: L.A.'s Desert Origins is essential for any Pavement fan or any serious fan of '90s indie rock. Frankly, it just doesn't get much better than this.