Pavement - Slanted And Enchanted Vinyl LP

Pavement’s debut full-length album, Slanted and Enchanted, released in 1992, is a marvelous piece of lazy rock'n'roll, establishing the band's spirit as simultaneously sophisticated and unpretentious, heartfelt and goofy. The album is filled with beautiful pop songs that are given a rhythmic edge by harder guitar rock. The band's "effortless charm" is showcased through evocative lyrics of songs like ”Loretta’s Scars” and the "sheer, clangy joyfulness" of their playing. This genius is exhibited casually, perhaps because the band’s spirit is split right down the middle, with one half based in New York City and the other in a sleepy California town. While Pavement occasionally lapses into "superdense experimental noise fests," the album more than compensates with ten cuts of solid songwriting. Ultimately, the band doesn’t evade or reflect reality, but "refract[s] it through kaleidoscope-tinted vision" to make it seem "even more weird and wondrous, perplexing and poignant than it already is," creating a sound that is "so fine it occasionally seems too perfect".