I readily admit these fuckers bite all your favorite bands, even more than the Serena Maneesh dudes I plugged a week or so ago. Granted Awesomer is more Dirty than Daydream Nation, more slanted than enchanted. So what's the big deal? Why Blood on the Wall, besides the fact they'll only cost you five points in Brent D's Indie Fantasy League? It took me a while to realize this, but whenever I throw on one of the aforementioned old guy records I'm always bummed how sterile they sound-- not nearly as noisy and savant as I remembered them. That's not to say Pavement haven't aged well. Really they've aged a bit too well. I want mold, I want putrefaction; all I get are mids and a jar of wet.
Awesomer is a case of miscalculated personal nostalgia-- what, as of September 20, 2005, I thought the early 90s sounded like in the early 90s. I'm dead wrong, but I dig the fantasy. Dog days, not heat but humidity, sun-poisoned, teat-stroked naughty talks during adult swim, general embarrassment around the community pool because I wore shirts in the water and never passed the diving test-- those are my knees jerking to the labored tread, nic-happy trod of "Stoner Jam". Thirteen years ago, I'd have found some BBS-equivalent context to argue, wrongly, that Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" wishes it had the nitro chorus and self-esteem of "Mary Ellen"-- wishes it had something to believe in. "I'd like to take you out tonight/ With your eyes clean and bright," sings bassist Courtney Shanks on "I'd Like to Take You Out Tonight", barely overpowering her brother Brad's velvet strums. If my Catholic grade school ass had known anything about real love, I totally would have put that song on Maria R.'s I-like-you mixtape instead of, jeez, "Bullet in the Head".
Now my young hand is bare from all this grade school '92 talk, but one more thing. Especially after side two's string of punchy punk numbers-- scream-and-response bleecker "Hey, Hey", strung-out stooge "Can You Hear Me", nimbly plucked, possibly Smash Bros.-repping "Get the Fuck Off My Cloud"-- what's clear is that BOTW don't build songs bottom-up so much as dream them big then sweat them down. Nothing's sparse, just concentrated, essential. Maybe BOTW vs. XYZ doesn't match White Stripes vs. XYZeppelin for quality, but the relationship's similar, and damn it all if the band doesn't just nail this gig in a few spots. Right, just like when you or "your friend" got up at the talent show and played Primus covers.
