• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About
  • Archives
  • Contact

Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

Certain Songs #1498: Pavement – “Fin”

April 1, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Brighten The Corners
Year: 1997

“No more absolutes”

It was so subtle that I literally didn’t realize it until the morning I’m writing this, but Pavement had at least one long Stephen Malkmus guitar jam near the end of every album from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain forward.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain had “Fillmore Jive” closing it off, but both Wowee Zowee and Terror Twilight stuck their long jams as the penultimate tunes, the former’s “Half a Canyon” somewhat obscured by the vocal shredding screams that accompanied it, and the latter’s “The Hexx” somewhat obscured for being near the end of Terror Twilight.

That leaves “Fin,” the final track of Brighten The Corners, and probably the moment that cemented for me that Stephen Malkmus was a guitar hero in the mode of Neil Young or Tom Verlaine, which is to say my kinda guitar hero.

So “Fin” starts with a lonely slow (of course) Steve West marital drum beat and takes a hot minute to start going anywhere, even after Malkmus starts singing what is mostly nonsense lyrics, my favorite of which is “I trust you will tell me if I am making a fool of myself. All the while, though, “Fin” building slowly (of course) to its back half, with Malkmus singing “ooooohs” and “ahhhhs” while West does build after build, until he builds directly into the guitar solo.

Said solo starts out crunchy and noisy, but then starts twirling and spinning around the build, almost getting away from Malkmus for a second, then he reels it back in, and as the song fades — for a full minute — it just gets weirder and lovelier and literally all I wanted from the Brighten The Corners reissue was a full version that didn’t fade. You know, like the CD version of “Marquee Moon” or the reissue version of “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts.”

Which, of course, ain’t how Pavement rolls: shit, Malkmus didn’t even bother to reproduce the solo live, because of course he didn’t, so my hope for a longer, even more definitive version was just a hope.

“Fin”

“Fin” performed live, 1999

The Certain Songs Database
A filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.

Check it out!

Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)

Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page

Filed Under: Certain Songs Tagged With: Brighten The Corners, Fin, Pavement

Primary Sidebar

Lopy

Search

Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2545: Sugar – “Helpless”
  • Certain Songs #2544: Sugar – “Changes”
  • Certain Songs #2543: Sugar – “A Good Idea”
  • Certain Songs #2542: Sugar – “The Act We Act”
  • Certain Songs #2541: Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”

Copyright © 2023 ยท Medialoper