My Top 1000 Songs #685: Date W/ Ikea

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.] 

Yes, Pavement was largely Stephen Malkmus' plaything. But I'm all in for the songs of guitarist Scott Kannberg a.k.a. Spiral Stairs. He may not have the same indie rock god polish, but the man knows his way around a skewed pop hook. Plenty of great SK tunes in the Pavement songbook (and of course beyond, with both Preston School of Industry and later under the Spiral Stairs moniker), but "Date w/ Ikea," off 1997's Brighten the Corners, holds the slight edge for me. A chiming, Byrdsy jangle to the guitars and some great band dynamics more than make up for the difficulty in deciphering what the damn thing's all about. Me, I hear it as a cryptic tale of suburban malaise; but that may just be my own personal gloss.

(You can find my re-constituted Brighter Corners CD, reconfigured to swap out some of the weaker tracks (IMHO) for better b-sides/outtakes, as well as my other Pavement remakes, over here.)

And here's my mix of great songs by bands' non-primary singer/songwriters.

Live 2022:

Cool performance... Spiral Stairs joining Malkmus & the Jicks, 2016: