8.

Pavement – Crooked Rain Crooked Rain

I love Pavement so much. When Crooked Rain came out, I followed them on tour for four stops, Grateful Dead-style: Minneapolis, Chicago… maybe Milwaukee? And Louisville. There were The Replacements and all this punk rock stuff, but Pavement were from a middle class background – they seemed well-bred, these put-together guys and they played music that had this smirk to it. You wanted to be in on the joke.

‘Gold Soundz’ is one of my favourite songs ever – you don’t know what he’s talking about, but it sounds cool, you know? [sings] "Going back to the Gold Soundz…" It’s weird and hard to break through at times: you don’t know what he’s talking about, the cover makes no sense, the liner notes make no sense, but… it’s just cool, you know what I mean? They sound like they’re having fun. I love all their records, but I think this is the one that captured my imagination most. A lot of the records I’ve chosen here were ones I was looking back on. But I was so into their previous album Slanted And Enchanted, and Crooked Rain was one I was looking forward to.