Slanted and Enchanted

Certain Songs #1482: Pavement – “Perfume-V”

March 15, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“She’s got the radio active”

One of the more fun things about Slanted and Enchanted were the song titles, some of which had something to do with the lyrics of the songs, and some which didn’t. So there was a sometimes a bit of a disconnect as to which song you were listening to. While “Loretta’s Scars” and “Two States” were obvious, it took a while for “Summer Babe” to get to the titular babe.

Then again, there were songs where the title seemingly had no bearing whatsoever to the words. For example: “Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era” or “Our Singer,” or most especially, “Perfume-V” the title of which has almost nothing to do with perhaps the most otherwise easily grokked song on the whole record.

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

March 14, 2019 by Jim Connelly

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.”

Certain Songs #1479: Pavement – “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”

March 12, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Slanted and Enchanted
Year: 1992

“Every time I sit around I find I’m shot”

This is where I came in. Despite the fact that Pavement hailed from only about 100 miles or so north from Fresno — making them the greatest band to come from the San Joaquin Valley (sorry, Miss Alans) — I hadn’t heard of them until the critical buzz surrounding Slanted and Enchanted hit like a truck barreling down Highway 99.

That might have been different had I still been at KFSR — those early EPs probably made it there — but I left the radio station in 1989, and spent the next couple years slightly less focused on discovering new music until 1991’s insanity dragged me back to it. So while Slanted and Enchanted came out in April of 1992, I didn’t get around to buying until that awful July, probably based upon Robert Christgau’s review in The Village Voice, and without having heard a single note they’d ever made.