📚 Homework Alert: Lets Dig into Slanted & Enchanted by Pavement!
Was it genius or just glorious noise? Time to give Pavement’s debut another spin.
Class is almost in session—and this week’s required reading? Just one of the most influential indie rock albums of the ’90s: Pavement’s Slanted & Enchanted.
If you’ve never cracked open this particular textbook, think of it this way: Pavement didn’t play sloppy—they made sloppy sound cool. Loose, laid-back, but always on the edge of falling apart, their debut album is a hazy postcard from the Gen X garage, where irony, poetry, and guitar fuzz live in perfect disharmony. It’s a sound that shrugs and smirks at the same time. 💿🎸
This week's selection comes courtesy of DMO Union member Rudy Stowell, who knows a classic when he hears one. We’re diving into how Slanted & Enchanted turned low fidelity into high art, and how Stephen Malkmus made mumbling an aesthetic choice long before your favorite lo-fi playlist existed.
Released in 1992, Slanted & Enchanted wasn’t just an album—it was a mood. A mission statement for misfits. A warm, weird, and wonderfully offbeat debut that helped birth a generation of indie rock weirdos. Its story is one of scrappy home recordings, tape hiss, and the kind of lyrical non-sequiturs that somehow feel just right.
📝 Your homework before the episode drops:
Listen (or re-listen) to Slanted & Enchanted. Get comfortable with the beautifully off-kilter brilliance of tracks like “Summer Babe” and “Here.” Pro tip: headphones recommended for maximum tape hiss nostalgia.
Double down on your Pavement education by checking out our earlier episode on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain—their not-quite-mainstream breakthrough: Listen here.
Ask yourself: what still works, and what doesn’t? Is this album still a worthy cornerstone of indie rock, or is it riding on nostalgic fumes? We want your hot takes and cold analysis.
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain | 90s Rock Revisited
In February 1994, cultural tremors were everywhere. The Winter Olympics had just kicked off in Lillehammer, Norway, while Ace of Base was climbing the charts with their soon-to-be No. 1 hit, “The Sign.” Just days before, Green Day released their breakthrough album
I remember listening to this in the mid-90s when I first discovered indie music and kept seeing this album get referenced. I didn't get it. I am looking forward to giving it a fresh listen.
I'm giving SLANTED another spin. It never moved me before, but I'm hoping this time...