Pavement
Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal
MATADOR
When the mellow “Spit on a Stranger” guitar part finally kicks in at the end of LP1 on Pavement’s new reissue package Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal, it comes with some relief. Like each of the Stockton slacker rockers’ previous albums, their fifth and final record has been newly re-released in a 45-track package with B-sides, demos, and live cuts, but its most revelatory feature is its simplest: for the vinyl edition, they’ve restored the Terror Twilight track order as intended by producer Nigel Godrich. Guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg chose the sequence that went to print at the end of on-again off-again recording sessions that saw the band’s internal relationships fray, and he picked the friendly “Stranger” to lead the record as a would-be hook. Godrich wanted something more like OK Computer, opening with the darker, jammier, and overall more difficult “Platform Blues” to count you into the conflicted record that follows.
Even as an apologist for the original release, I’m inclined to say Godrich was right. With the 1999 order, it’s too easy to zone out between the singles—“Stranger” and the still-gorgeous “Major Leagues” frame the A-side, with “Carrot Rope” as a tongue-in-cheek send-off. Farewell Horizontal opens on a gloomier, gloamier, and probably more honest run; the sloshy “Hexx” gets second-from-the-top billing, and it’s a tense drive through “You Are a Light” and “Cream of Gold” to the tender “Ann Don’t Cry,” now elevated to side-closer status. Godrich puts the terror up front, relegating the more straightforward stuff to the flip side, so the witchy, brooding jams that sprouted from the band’s disunity now feel like a feature as much as a bug.
With the possible exception of Wowee Zowee, Terror Twilight may be their most-maligned record by fans and least-praised by critics, and not without reason. “Billie” still falls a bit flat, and putting “Platform Blues” in the pole position doesn’t alleviate its odd dynamics (which do make more sense in the included live version, where the crowd chimes in during the final stop-and-start). There’s more slack in these tracks and less slay, but like many of the underachievers Pavement was charged with representing, they could deliver when the work came due. As a band that followed in the footsteps of R.E.M., they never released anything so close to “Losing My Religion” as “Major Leagues.” Unfortunately, the peak of Stephen Malkmus’ collaboration with Godrich was also the nadir of Pavement as a creative unit; in the included interview booklet, percussionist Bob Nastanovich recalls his first time hearing “Leagues” was on his advance copy of the CD, and he notes that it never really took off live.
It makes sense that there’s an over-representation of solo Malkmus demos in this package compared to previous reissues, and also that there’s not much interesting material that hasn’t previously been released elsewhere. Hearing the explosive live cover of CCR’s “Sinister Purpose” that closes the whole shebang, it’s hard to make the case that Pavement ever lost their edge even as they stopped gelling creatively, and it’s a shame that that particular fire never sparks up in the compilation’s other tracks. But part of the band’s appeal has always been the ambiguity of intent that makes Farewell Horizontal such a gift. Dig the Spiral Stairs songs that didn’t make the cut—think about the kind of record you could have put together with everything on offer. And see if you can help but crack a smile when Godrich’s order closes on Malkmus’ fond murmur: “I’ll be the one that leaves you high.”
