The World Is Mainly Divorces And Spare Change

Pavement “You Are A Light” (Live in NYC 1999)

Pavement was a restlessly creative band through the majority of their existence between 1989 and 1999, so the previous four deluxe reissues of their albums were stacked with non-album songs and unreleased material that was mostly of very high quality. Stephen Malkmus was moving so fast and with so much confidence that a lot of songs that would be the best thing a lot of bands could ever hope to write were relegated to b-sides or totally cast aside and left unfinished. But with Terror Twilight there’s really not a lot of extra songs and so the extra material on this reissue is very focused on charting the progress of the songwriting from demo to rehearsal to revision, and ultimately how some of the songs changed on stage. It’s very interesting but not tremendously listenable, and certainly not for anyone but the most obsessive fans.

Listening in on process is demystifying, and Pavement is a band that really thrives on mystique. There’s one demo in this set for “Billie” that actually kinda wrecks something I’ve cherished for a long time, a live recording of that song in St. Louis in which Malkmus seems to freestyle an entire perfectly formed verse off the top of his head. But no, it wasn’t off the top of his head, it was just a verse from the original draft that he’d replaced. I guess it’s cool to know that, but the idea that he could improvise so well was both rooted in plenty of other evidence supporting this and also just a fun thing to hold on to. It’s like finding out that sometimes Michael Jordan was getting lifted up on wires to slam dunk.

One of the most interesting songwriting journeys documented on this reissue is the gradual evolution of “You Are A Light” culminating in a live recording from a show I actually attended at Irving Plaza in Manhattan. As a tape collector it’s never been news to me that “You Are A Light” is best as a live song, nor has its origins been a mystery to me – there’s other early versions of the song that are not included here, including one that has the line variation “you..are a Sprite drinker…” that I always sorta anticipate in any version of the song. This set fills in a lot of steps along the way, including an extra long rendition laid down at Larry Crane’s Jackpot studio. I appreciate the lyrical variations as Malkmus improvises his way through rehearsal, particularly “I opened up my mouth, out came the words you despised.” But the magic doesn’t really happen for the song until Malkmus fully works out how the guitar parts fit together and how to really land the solo. By the time they lay it down with Nigel Godrich the song is perfectly formed, but on stage it gets a little more room to breathe. The song truly has some of the most beautiful guitar parts he’s ever written.

“You Are A Light” is one of a few songs on Terror Twilight where Malkmus is obviously sabotaging his lyrics a bit because he can sense the music wants to be more overtly sentimental than he was comfortable being at the time. You can hear him struggling with this in all the variations as he gradually edits out everything that seems like a song about a relationship in favor of telling a story about a weird senior trip abroad and nudging the chorus away from the far more romantic “you are the light becoming the day.” Since this song exists in many forms I don’t really mind that he ran away from the more open-hearted lines even if I actually favor them, and I think shrinking away from sentimentality was very honest and as a relatable impulse in and of itself. He wouldn’t be as afraid of it today, and hearing him be more open in later material is part of what makes having a long term fascination with an artist a fulfilling experience. They grow, you grow, and perspective shifts. I feel like I’ve been on all sides of this song at this point, and I’ve got a lot out of every version of it. I hope they play it on the tour this year so maybe I can get some new variations on it.

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