Song 19 – A song from your favourite album... – ‘Cut Your Hair’ – Pavement
Like favourite songs, I don’t really have favourite albums any more but Pavement were my favourite band for about 5 years and this was my favourite album of theirs so we’ll go with it.
Pavement - Cut Your Hair
I could have picked half a dozen songs but ‘Cut Your Hair’ is probably the most fun if you’ve not heard the band before. It bounces along nicely, the lyrics are fairly typical, with the odd memorable line, the odd line that makes sense and a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t. Pavement were always criticised for sounding too much like The Fall but I always found it easier to like Pavement records than Fall ones.
I lent a Pavement album to a classic rock purist once and he hated it. It was all out of tune, the timing was off and the songs are unfocussed and jump around a lot. I can't really disagree with anything he said. The difference is perhaps that I like the unpredictability and the way that the songs sometimes create moments of beauty despite themselves and not because of themselves. There are some songs in my list of 30 that I think you'd have to be mad not to appreciate. This is not one of them, but if you do then great. There's one more of us and one less of them.
David Millington
19th April 2011
Nottingham
Pavement were the kings of ‘Lo-fi’, a style that was popular in the US at around the time of grunge. It was similar to grunge in that it was a type of music that anyone could make and that didn’t require you to be a virtuoso to play it. It was always more art-school and College based than grunge. It was never as popular, never crossed over and I think has aged pretty well. Blur were said to have been very much influenced by Pavement prior to their recording their 'Blur' album of 1997. Other bands you might want to try in this style were Sebadoh, Archers of Loaf, Guided by Voices, Sammy, Small 23 and the Derby based Bivouac.
Guided by Voices - I am a Scientist
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