Slanted & Enchanted

Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.50) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone (12/26/02, p.114) - Ranked #3 in Rolling Stone's list of 2002's "10 Best Reissues" - "...Bite-size pieces of dada, rock candy cut into hard angles and fish-hook curves..." Spin - "The lyrics fill the air as well, enigmatic and fresh, stuff about making mistakes, catching angels, listening to the radio, and waiting for your dreams to come shuffling over the horizon, waiting in a sunlight that blisters the soul." Spin (9/99, p.119) - Ranked #5 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s." Spin (12/92, p.67) - Ranked #1 in Spin's list of the `20 Best Albums Of The Year' - "...so rich in melliflluous melodies, elliptical lyrics and thrilling, avant guitar-pop seductions that it renders any and all competition meaningless..." Spin (12/01/02, 139) - "...Pavement's idyllic indie-rock masterpiece..." Spin (3/92, p.73) - Highly Recommended - "...Pavement makes things happen where nothing happened before..." Spin (12/01/02, 139) - "...Pavement's idyllic indie-rock masterpiece..." Entertainment Weekly (7/31/92, p.62) - "...brimming with beautiful pop songs....Simultaneously sophisticated and unpretentious, heartfelt and totally goofy....brilliant..." - Rating: A- Entertainment Weekly (10/25/02, p.77) - "...As fresh as next week's sushi...a masterpiece of contradictions...rarely matched before or since." - Rating: A Q (1/93, p.73) - Included in Q's list of the `50 Best Albums Of 1992.' Q (6/92, p.103) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...stands out through sheer breadth of influence and innate accessibility....they play expertly..." Uncut (2/03, p.92) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...It still sounds magnificent..." Alternative Press (7/95, pp.79-80) - Ranked #16 in AP's list of the `Top 99 Of '85-'95' - "...represents the first movement from grunge to slackerdom....The guitars mutate, the melodies shift and turn into half-hearted harmonies and everything is pulled together by an ever-building messy momentum and the most perfect sense of vocal phrasing and timing since Lou Reed..." Option (7-8/92, p.118) - "...Pavement's sound has been perfected on its first LP, already a contender for album of the year....The melodies are much more interesting than most rock out there....Pavement has brought dissonance into the realm of hooks..." Village Voice (3/2/93, p.5) - Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's list of the `40 Best Albums Of 1992.' Billboard (p.36) - "SLANTED wins on raw brilliance alone....[The] debut offers an exhilarating glimpse of greatness to come." Mojo (Publisher) (2/03, p.99) - "...The LUXE & REDUXE edition expands S&E with a feast for initiates..."

Listening to Slanted & Enchanted is like listening to a college radio station that you can barely tune in -- melodies are interrupted by shards of white noise, only to have a simple hook pull everything back into focus. On their first full-length album, Pavement constructed a cycle of gleeful guitar noise punctuated by fragments of melody floating in and out of the chaos. Aesthetically, the thin, noisy low-fidelity production is appealing and uncompromising, but what makes Slanted & Enchanted remarkable is the songwriting. Instead of disguising an underdeveloped sense of songcraft, the production embellishes and subverts the band's gift for unusual, catchy hooks. Surrounded by fuzzy, noisy guitars, white noise, and Stephen Malkmus' languid vocals, the pure pop melodies of "Trigger Cut" and "Summer Babe" sound foreign, but the production gives context to the gorgeous melancholy of "Here" and the brooding "In the Mouth a Desert." Some listeners may initially find the lo-fi sound of the record inaccessible, but the sheer strength of Pavement's songs settles in after a few plays. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine