Unnecessary brilliance: Pavement's Secret History

However, Pavement’s loose ends were always key to their appeal, and with no new music or live appearances seeming particularly likely at this point, five years on from their reunion and release of best-of compilation Quarantine the Past, a partial tying-up of these loose ends seems like an appropriate way to sate the hunger of their fiercely loyal legions of fans.

The collection starts strongly, with the wild-eyed Krautrock of “Sue Me Jack” and “So Stark (You’re a Skyscraper)”’s stream-of-consciousness waltz. Both are classic early Pavement, all rickety percussion, scratchy guitars and eloquently thrown-together lyricism. Indeed, much of the first part of this collection is comprised of songs that rival anything on Slanted and Enchanted in terms of craft and zeal. “Secret Knowledge of Backroads” utilises Stephen Malkmus’ underrated talent for heart-rending vocal and lyrical vulnerability, foreshadowing the melancholy likes of “Grounded” and “Starlings of the Slipstream”.

“My First Mine” unexpectedly recalls Ziggy-era Bowie by virtue of its reedy melody and glam-rock 12/8 stomp, and “Circa 1762” is a warm, inviting cousin of “Summer Babe”, a song to which we are treated two new versions on The Secret History. Perhaps best of all on the first half of the compilation is “Greenlander”, a lilting, bittersweet number that features some truly outstanding, satisfyingly characteristic Malkmus lyricism. The vivid imagery of lines like, “On virgin fields we’ll skate / Stand by children we’ll create / Like the arctic wind we spin / A windmill’s rose into the threshing soul”, is just dazzling; it’s a crime that this song was relegated to B-side status.

The second part of the record consists of a live recording from a 13-song appearance at Brixton Academy in 1992. It kicks off with raucous renditions of “Conduit For Sale”, “Fame Throwa” and “Home”, before the gentler, more nuanced “Perfume-V” and the evergreen “Summer Babe” settle the set a little. “Frontwards”, a cultish classic of the same dizzyingly high standard as “Greenlander”, is arguably the highlight of the live recording, save perhaps for the closing catharsis of “In The Mouth A Desert”.

Of course, this being early-‘90s Pavement, moments of spirited, dissonant, Fall-indebted obtuseness are plentiful, and The Secret History is all the better for it. The live version of “No Life Singed Her” is even more frenetic and disorientating than its counterpart on Slanted and Enchanted; the same can be said of “Two States”, and the first half of “Angel Carver Blues / Mellow Jazz Docent” is, frankly, pretty hard work for the listener. However, this is not a criticism – indeed, it could be claimed that if you complain about Pavement’s regular nose-dives into squealing feedback and jarring, barely-controlled rhythm, you’re probably missing the point.

The Secret History (Volume One) does not shed any new light on this formative early period of Pavement’s career. Yet it doesn’t particularly need to – it contains “Circa 1762”, “Greenlander” and “Frontwards”, not to mention new versions of “Here”, “In The Mouth A Desert” and “Summer Babe”. Any record containing tracks of this quality, as well as 24 others of a similarly high standard, is always worth releasing, whether or not it feels academically or artistically necessary.