Review

Recovering from their narrow escape from pop stardom, Pavement were having a major identity crisis in 1995. They solved it, with brilliant perversity, by making a stylistically sprawling album about their refusal to align themselves with anyone or anything. "We Dance," a mocking tribute to David Bowie by way of the Frogs, spits in the face of classic rock's "elders"; "Rattled by the Rush" is Stephen Malkmus' repudiation of growing up, its riff breathing in and heaving out as Malkmus evokes adult clothes and tears and ceremonies. In places, they're alarmingly guarded: Malkmus keeps drifting into snickers and squeals whenever he gets too close to singing seriously, "Serpentine Pad" and "Flux=Rad" put their punk rock riffs in giant quotation marks, "Fight This Generation" is an anthem that turns its teeth on itself, and the tossed-off closer "Western Homes" is so single-mindedly alienated from its images of family and household that its sounds are encased in a glossy carapace. So what was left for Pavement? Staking out a position on the sidelines of the pop culture they observed, and concentrating on their internal dynamics as a band — they never sounded more like a democratic quintet before or after this.