My Top 1000 Songs #982: Painted Soldiers

[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.]

While Pavement were undeniably largely Stephen Malkmus' vehicle, I'm a sucker for guitarist Scott Kannberg's (a.k.a. Spiral Stairs) contributions. Generally relegated to a track or two per album, or a stray b-side, Kannberg's songs were often more straightforwardly catchy, and what he may have lacked in vocal range he made up for in wiggy pop enthusiasm. One of his peaks, "Painted Soldiers," was inexplicably omitted from 1995's Wowee Zowee (where it would've added some much-need pop-punch to the sprawling, at times inconsistent LP; my own WZ remake includes this and a few other outtakes and is, IMHO, far superior). Instead, the track ended up on the soundtrack for the Kids In The Hall's 1996 movie Brain Candy--reportedly a quite terrible film (never saw it) with an unusually awesome soundtrack (which also includes such 90s indie rock luminaries as Guided by Voices, Matthew Sweet, Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, etc.). 

The track repurposes the ooh-ooh-oohs last seen on "Cut My Hair," abetting an enthusiastically-delivered rocker that makes little sense but is frenetically fun.

Live 2023:

Live 1997 (audio):