No Place Like Home (Anywhere But Here) – Pavement
“Box Elder” – Slay Tracks EP
“I’m taking the next bus outta here / I’m gonna head for Box Elder, MO.”
“Here” – Slanted & Enchanted
A wake, at the end of all things.
I was dressed for success,
But success it never comes
And I’m the only one who laughs
At your jokes when they are so bad
(And your jokes are always bad)
But they’re not as bad as this –
Come join us in a prayer,
We’ll be waiting, waiting where
Everything’s ending here
“Gold Soundz” – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Home lyric: – “I keep my address to myself, because it’s secret.”
Best/saddest lyric: “So drunk, in the August sun and you’re the kind of girl I like / Because you’re empty, and I’m empty, and you can never quarantine the past.”
“Range Life” – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Started a hilariously one-sided feud with Billy Corgan (I think he’s STILL mad about it) with an offhand reference. Calls to mind “Home on the Range”.
Home lyric: “If I could settle down, then I would settle down.”
“Shady Lane” – Brighten the Corners
Home lyric: “A shady lane / Everybody wants one.”
Best lyric: “You’ve been chosen as an extra in the movie adaptation of the sequel to your life.”
“Major Leagues” – Terror Twilight
Trying to get somewhere, but knowing it’ll never happen.
Angle for the ringside seats
When they fall
Don’t blame me
Bring on the Major Leagues
Bonus – Stephen Malkmus solo track
“Church On White” – Stephen Malkmus
This one doesn’t relate to “home”, but this weightless waltz from his first solo record is one of the loveliest songs he ever did.
Best lyrics: The “Carry on, it’s a marathon / carrion, it’s what we all become” rhyme, and “All you really wanted, was everything / Plus everything”.
What are you guys listening to?
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Man, the Pavement years…
I’ve been listening to the sort stuff I mentioned to you a while back: Twigs, Hiatus Kaiyote, The Internet, and at this moment, Xenia Rubinos.
https://youtu.be/rR5Lxn_r2agReport
The video for this one is kinda awesome:
https://youtu.be/wz-gaDZeGlgReport
And in addition to being very catchy, this one describes a system vastly superior to our queue-dependent one:
https://youtu.be/0IRIOCKS0PEReport
Is it different than queuing, or is it simply figuring out where the back of the queue is? My Spanish is pretty rudimentary and rusty.Report
It’s still in order, but you stand or sit wherever you want and just wait for the person who became just before you to know when it’s your turn.Report
I don’t know why, but I was just thinking how Pavement were seen as smart-assed slackers, but a lot of my favorite songs by them were just super-duper sad – and then realizing that those sad songs all seemed thematically-similar. Hence this post.Report
Putting this together is impressive. I’ve always thought of them as kind of melancholy, but then, that might be because I spent much of that time kind of melancholy.Report
I think that lyric in “Gold Soundz” is so good, because he so deftly and quickly reveals as pain and self-loathing something that initially looks like outward-directed nastiness.
I really should have transcribed the (gut)punchline thus:
Report
Which may be the most ’94 lyrics possible.Report
Duuuude, I could go on forever about Pavement. I submit Fin, the closer to Brighten the Corners, is their saddest leavin’ home song (and a gut-wrenching outro) – though I still have no idea what Malkmus is talking about most of the time.Report
I couldn’t quite work in this one, but this one is super-sad, and another good album closer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjcfT2xiArcReport
Today in Glyph’s Ridiculously-Belated Lyrical Revelations:
He doesn’t say “jazzbo” (a slightly-derisive term for jazz fans, sort of like calling them “hipsters” or “beatniks”). He says “jazz buffs“, which makes the “skinny arms” joke make more sense, and echo the prior line about “composers so distracted” (that is, = NOT composed).Report