PavementBest Pavement Albums Ranked

Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement

pitchfork

10

“The first career-spanning Pavement comp contains their best-known songs as well as concert staples, fan favorites, and at least a couple of curveballs.”

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins

rollingstone

10

“Pavement may have been alternative rock’s most notorious mess, but this deluxe reissue of their best album, appended with nearly forty extra tracks, illuminates one of their precious gifts: Like nobody else, the Stockton, California, band could make simple pop-rock chords sound really, really sarcastic. On its breakthrough, 1992’s Slanted and Enchanted, melodies crept into […]”

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins

pitchfork

10

“Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe-- packed with top-quality extras at a low price-- was a near-perfect example of how to reissue an already beloved record. Matador now gives the same treatment to that album's equally classic 1994 follow-up. The result, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins, is a two-disc remastered reissue, featuring 49 total tracks collecting B-sides, comp tracks and outtakes, including 25 unreleased recordings and 11 unheard tracks.”

Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe

rollingstone

10

“Oh, the summer of ’92. "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover." Kris Kross. Nirvana. Dylan and Kelly finally made out at the beach on 90210, while Brenda was off in Paris. All summer long, we sang along to the songs of Pavement, and every word we sang we knew was true, even the song […]”

Wowee Zowee (Sordid Sentinels Edition)

pitchfork

9.3

“Matador and Pavement follow their 2xCD expanded reissues of Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain with a deluxe Wowee Zowee package that includes B-sides rounding out the first disc, and a second CD of outtakes, radio shots, live songs, and compilation tracks.”

Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Ed.

rollingstone

9.0

“In 1997, these slacker romantics slowed things down and serenaded their fans, delivering an album short on noise and long on artfully dissonant ballads. Stephen Malkmus worked softy sentimentality even into his funniest lines, rhyming "quasar in the mist" with "kaiser has a cyst" ("Stereo"). With a second disc of bonus material — including classic […]”