Loretta's Scars Archives

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“I can see the sun, I can see the sun”

Of course Slanted and Enchanted was such a treasure trove of chewy goodness that after the opening one-two punch of “Summer Babe” and “Trigger Cut,” it was nearly impossible to figure out which songs I loved the most, even as I spent much of the summer of 1992 blasting it from my office at the Video Zone.

So my deepest apologies to people who loved songs like “Conduit For Sale,” with its repeated screams of “I’m tryin, I’m tryin, I’m tryin” (which caused Morgan to walk into my office and wryly observe “I think he’s trying”) or “Fame Throwa,” which balances perhaps the stupidest drumbeat ever weirdly synthed-out guitars or Kanneberg’s “Two States” or even the relatively mellow, almost jangly “Here.”

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“Electricity . . . . and lust!”

That said, if I was forced at gunpoint — and please don’t, mmm-kay? — to choose my favorite song from Slanted and Enchanted it would absolutely be “Trigger Cut,” which is stuffed with wall-to-all hooks, and remains endlessly surprising even all these years later.

It was also kind of confusing to me — often my default mode when first encountering any new Pavement material — because to this day, that whole “Wounded Kite At :17” makes so little sense that it’s probably a joke that even Stephen Malkmus probably doesn’t remember the origin of. I mean, there is a little instrumental doo-dad tacked onto the end of the song, and it might be called “Wounded Kite,” why not? But it’s of course at 2:49, not :17.

Loretta's Scars

Certain Songs #1481: Pavement – “Loretta’s Scars”

Certain Songs #1480: Pavement – “Trigger Cut/Wounded Kite At :17”