- Purchase a product from the Music Store sold by Amazon.co.uk and receive £1 to use on an album download in our MP3 Store. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Product Description
Review
Pavement were always a brilliantly awkward bunch and apparently remain so, having picked a very peculiar selection of tracks for this compilation, released to tie in with their imminent reformation tour, but overdue nonetheless.
Stephen Malkmus and co were simply too good a band for Quarantine the Past to actively flounder, but its early stages really are surprisingly hard work. Or maybe not that surprising, given that after propulsive opener Gold Soundz (the title track of sorts, featuring as it does the line “you can never quarantine the past”) the album lurches straight into abrasive non-album rarities Frontwards and Mellow Jazz Docent. They’re decent enough tracks, but they’re hardly the band’s finest hour, and the wryly anthemic blast of Stereo sounds a tad beleaguered when it comes round at track four, not nearly so effective as occupying pole position on 1997’s Brighten the Corners.
Even more bizarre, though, is the fact that at the seventh song – Cut Your Hair, Malkmus’s peerlessly snide ode to the MTV generation – Quarantine the Past suddenly decides to do what Best Ofs are supposed to do: present a varied, enjoyable and commercially minded selection of tracks communicating the artist’s greatness. In short order we get the sighingly pretty Shady Lane/Jay vs. S, the gorgeous shoegaze chug of Summer Babe (Winter Version) and the elegiac Range Life, aka the best country rock song about supporting grunge bands on tour, ever. Interspersed are a handful of album tracks that thoroughly vindicate Pavement’s towering reputation: the sorrowful Here, proto-Strokes roar of Unfair, heat-haze blur of Grounded, and guitarist Scott Kannburg’s rousing Date w/IKEA. Hit single Carrot Rope is an undeniably baffling omission, but you can forgive that when the final rarity is fan favourite The Unseen Power of the Picket Fence, Malkmus’s brilliantly mad ode to the early works of REM.
All-in-all, it’s a bizarre track sequencing, reading more like a gig setlist than an introduction to Pavement – but it scarcely seems credible that they’re going to play all these same songs every night on a six-month world tour. Still, it all clicks into gear by the end, and it perhaps bodes well that they appear to have worked out how to finish things on a high. --Andrzej Lukowski
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Show me a word that rhymes with Pavement.,
This review is from: Quarantine The Past: The Best (Audio CD)
This is a twisty-turny, non-chronological run through the recording career of one of the greatest bands ever. A collection that subverts the 'best of' genre: whilst containing some of their singles, 'Stereo', 'Trigger Cut', 'Range Life','Gold Soundz', 'Shady Lane' and the greatest pop song ever - 'Cut Your Hair',it also pitches quite a few curve balls along the way, 'Mellow Jazz Docent','Debris Slide' and 'Fight This Generation' for example. Domino Records launched a competition to guess the track listing prior to release which kind of sums it all up - you could pick anything and you'd get a fantastic career overview, but whatever you pick, it's still going to be different to the actual release! If you're new to Pavement, as opined in other reviews, this is a good place to start but if you like what you hear you should also check out their full albums. 'Slanted and Enchanted' and 'Crooked Rain Crooked Rain' can sit along side any classic album you care to metnion. My one reservation about this collection is that it doesn't contain any of their excellent b-sides such as 'Westy Can Drum' and 'Harness your hopes' which I feel would have fitted in nicely with the spirit of this retrospective. However, this is fabulous stuff!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, well-balanced comp, not for fans,
By
This review is from: Quarantine The Past: The Best (Audio CD)
At least Domino are honest. This has been released to tie in with the tour, and I for one have no beef with my favourite band making a few bucks after the event. Hey, they even waited the 10 years promised, 'scool!It's exactly what it says, an overview, and probably how the live set lists will look - I'd guess way too many crowd pleasers for the die-hard fans' liking and some real oddballs thrown in. A reviewer above moans at the lack of B-sides etc but we have Shoot the Singer from an EP (gorgeous) and Picket Fence, some freaky homage to REM from the No Alternative comp back in '92 or '93, heh. I think it has the right balance, the moods seem to flow well enough (I can hear this record without hearing it, ok!) and it ends on a freaky album track prog-out. Of course, it's needless if you're a fan, and rather like the recent Radiohead Best-Of, they weren't a singles band so this is a little jarring for the long-termers. What it will do, hopefully, is lead to people spotting favourite tracks, finding that the albums have very clear personalities, and then going for one of the brilliant album re-releases, complete with all odds and ends from the same period. As a final note, S&E's re-release ends with early Peel sessions and the Brixton '91 gig supporting Sonic Youth, and it's awesome. I'd say THAT's the Pavement that made people fall in love, a good insight to the early band and a logical progression from older, interesting and do-it-your-own-way bands like the Fall, Chrome (!), early Mary Chain, Zappa, and I think it's this that secures their place. Their contemporaries don't hold up in retrospect, and I don't think anyone's advanced further since.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pavement - Go back to those gold soundz,
By
This review is from: Quarantine The Past: The Best (Audio CD)
With hindsight it was no great surprise that when Damien Albarn tired of the rat race that had become Britpop he turned his focus to Pavement possibly the greatest American band (along with Wilco) of the past 20 years. The subsequent album "Blur" did indeed caused significant tensions between one time friends Albarn and the creative genius behind Pavement, rocks answer to Einstein, Stephen Malkmus. No need to recount the feud here suffice it to say that I would give up every Blur album I own if it came down to a straight choice to retaining any one of the following three Pavement albums namely "Brighten the Corners", "Slanted & Enchanted" or "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" by Pavement.Why is such an endearingly shambolic band so loved? After all some of their incoherent performances were legendary and generated such antagonism that they were often booed off stage. Indeed at one time they revelled in the self appointed label of "The Band That Ruined Lollapallooza" as a result of a particularly anarchic performance. It was because of this that they were often dubbed the American "Wire" or more precisely the American "Fall"/ These are comparisons that in this reviewers eyes can only be viewed as wonderful compliments to reputation of an already great band and you will do no wrong checking out Pavements cover of Mark E Smith's "The Classical". "Quarantine the past" is a thorough if rather badly sequenced "best of" (what do you expect?) and contains enough delights to keep both old and new Pavement fans roundly satisfied. Yes there are curious omissions, not least of the truly brilliant "Pueblo" and "We Dance" from "Wowee Zowee, "Major Leagues" and "Carrot Rope" from the admittedly flawed "Terror Twilight" and that Pavement perennial and great lo fi anthem "Zurich is Stained" from Slanted. It does contain however Pavements greatest hits (oh the irony) which include "Summer babe (winter version)", Trigger Cut/Wounded kite at 17" "Cut your hair" "Here" "Stereo" and everyone's favourite "Range life" with the Malkmus showing yet again that he is best lyricist this side of Morrissey. Who else could have got away in "Stereo" with "Well focus on the quasar in the mist / The Kaiser has a cyst / And I'm a blank want list" Clearly for this "best of" the albums compilers this must have been a terrifying task. Pavement fans are Obsessive Compulsive Disorder types of the most extreme kind (Yes your honour I too am guilty) and there is no substitute for the owning the three albums highlighted above. Pavement never sought the big time, no great archive of MTV videos exists and on times they were truly dire. Yet like Television or the Velvets their influence is enduring and persuasive and can be heard in REM, Nirvana, Blur and Grizzly Bear et al. Never has such a shambolic and awkward band cast such a giant shadow.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
