Review

Released between Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the Watery, Domestic EP captures Pavement in a transitional phase, as the band began to abandon the static-laden guitar rock of their early recordings and started to move toward a cleaner sound. Most of the innovations of Watery, Domestic have to do with recording techniques, yet the songs are certainly fine. The cleaner production brings Pavement's inherent fractured melodicism into sharper focus, which benefits "Texas Never Whispers," the wistful "Frontwards," and the bright, nearly jangly "Shoot the Singer," but the slow grind of "Lions (Linden)" would have been mesmerizing regardless of the production, or the lack of it.