Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal
When Pavement broke up in 1999, they left behind one of the most influential bodies of work in indie rock: music that bridged melody and noise, classic rock and punk, cryptic poetry and boyish charm. They could be breezy and low-key, but also elevated—a balance few artists have managed to strike since. “I think there was a certain amount of apprehension when the band ended,” Bob Nastanovich, the band’s auxiliary percussionist, backup “singer,” and general noisemaker tells Apple Music. “Like, after five albums in over an eight-year period, what the hell were we going to do next that would keep Pavement fans happy?” Their swan song, 1999’s *Terror Twilight*, had represented a shift: The sound was more processed (the influence, in part, of producer Nigel Godrich, then famous for his work on Radiohead’s *OK Computer* and Beck’s *Mutations*), and the songs split between the band’s headiest psychedelic tendencies (“Folk Jam,” “The Hexx”) and their most conventional ones (“Spit on a Stranger,” “Ann Don’t Cry”). The recording process had been fragmented: The band’s primary songwriter, Stephen Malkmus, hadn’t shared much in advance, and the band ended up cycling through a couple of studios before anything clicked—a process highlighted in demos for “You Are a Light” and Malkmus’ synth-heavy sketches of “Carrot Rope” and “Major Leagues,” included on the album’s 2022 edition. “\[Godrich\] liked the band a lot, and I think he felt a certain amount of pressure,” Nastanovich says. “And Pavement’s approach to recording records was probably something different from what he had encountered at that point in his career in terms of lack of preparation and what one might basically call professionalism.” The band was so split on how to sequence the album that when it came time to package the reissue, they opted to change the original release’s tracklisting to what Nigel Godrich had envisioned, leading off with some of the album’s densest tracks (“Platform Blues,” “The Hexx”) and lightening things as it goes, ending with the (relatively) simple romance of “Spit on a Stranger,” previously the album’s opener. Between the poles, you can hear the band’s legacy: smart, stonery nerds who punctuate their fog with moments of disarming emotional clarity. “I think when *Terror Twilight* was finished and came out, we felt like it was mission accomplished, from the standpoint that it was clearly different from the previous four Pavement records,” says Nastanovich, whose loose, multifaceted role in the band always made him a kind of spiritual avatar for the band as a whole. He remembers a day late in the process of *Terror Twilight*, twiddling knobs on his Nord synthesizer, trying to find a cool sound, not realizing his bandmates could even hear him. He looked up to see Stephen Malkmus through the window of the recording booth, giving a thumbs-up. “Moments like that are sort of cherished by me,” he says, “because I was just hoping for the best.”
On April 8th, Matador will release ‘Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal’, an exhaustive 45-track set compiling the remastered original album, B-sides, home demos, rehearsal tapes, era-appropriate live recordings, and even the rough tracks from Pavement’s scrapped session at Sonic Youth’s Echo Canyon studio. Altogether, it features 28 unreleased tracks. Today, you can listen to the never before heard full-band track “Be The Hook”. The 4xLP and 2xCD editions will include a book with never-before-seen photos and commentary/context from band members Mark Ibold, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, Spiral Stairs, and Steve West as well as producer Nigel Godrich. The LP will restore Godrich’s suggested sequence – which foregrounds the album’s headiest songs – while the CD preserves the final track order assembled by the band. Originally released in 1999, ‘Terror Twilight’ marked a departure from Pavement’s established operating methods. Which is to say that it was recorded with a big-time producer in an expensive studio. However, for all the talk of “polish” and “precision” it’s still very much a Pavement record. And a great one. Like every Pavement album that preceded it, ‘Terror Twilight’ thrills and confounds. Often at the same time. Twenty-two years on, the songs remain moody, strange, and eminently deserving of re-celebration.
Pavement’s swan song finally gets the full reissue treatment, with various demos, alternate versions, and a new track sequence. It remains a fascinatingly ambivalent note to finish on for one of the most influential indie rock bands of their era.
Matador’s final installment of their Pavement reissue campaign captures Stephen Malkmus chafing against not only his…
Ahead of their summer reunion shows, Pavement belatedly reissue their crepuscular goodbye, 'Terror Twilight', with a trove of additional context and offcuts.