Imaginary Albums #2: Pavement

I've created personalized versions of all the Pavement albums (other than 1992's pretty-perfect debut Slanted & Enchanted), using the generous batches of outtakes/b-sides/EPs included on the deluxe reissues to substitute some of the best leftovers for the albums' occasional misfires. This was most successful on 1995's Wowee Zowee, an album I found a bit of a bloated mess (yet still a flawed masterpiece) in its original version, but arguably their best record with a few helpful tweaks.

The one wholly new Pavement LP I created was Watery Majestic, which imagines a second full-length album featuring original drummer Gary Young, who had been replaced by the time of Slanted's long-delayed follow-up Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The imaginary creation takes the original 1992 4-song Watery, Domestic EP (arguably one of history's finest EPs) and expands it to proper album-length with various outtakes appended to the Slanted/Crooked reissues. As it turns out, most of those songs were left off the albums for good reason, few of them approaching the level of anything on the EP (though "All My Friends" could be their great lost classic, and it's nice to have a home for their intriguing compilation track "Greenlander"). Still, plenty of raw, primal early indie rock that works well in this context, an interesting view of what-might-have-been.

On the CDR I burned myself, I segued together "Unseen Power Of the Picket Fence" (about their love of R.E.M.) and "Camera" (an actual R.E.M. cover), and it was pretty cool; obviously couldn't do that for the recreated playlist below. (I wrote previously about my Pavement reworkings and linked the playlists here.)