Customer Reviews

Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I don't know why other reviewers think this sounds good, there is clipping, distortion, and hyper compression. In short, there are all the tell tale signs of loud mastering (see "loudness war" at wikipedia). For those that don't know, most pop rock offerings today try to be as loud as possible so that they will not be out volumed during ipod shuffle play. They do this by making the average volume approach peak volume. This means whispers become as loud as shouts. The end result is degraded sound quality and if you listen to the 1997 version alongside this one on a decent stereo or decent set of headphones, matching the volume levels, you will notice the difference. The new one lacks punch, has poor sounding cymbal crashes, no dynamics, and intermittent distortion. Overall, a poor job of mastering, but it's a good 40% louder than the 1997 version. So if you're thinking of buying this because you want the best sounding version of BTC, don't.

However, there are quite a few extras that are worth listening too, especially if you were lucky enough to score the edition that came with the live LP. I received two discs and one LP for 19.99, great deal. And if you are a long term fan this set is really something you should pick up. The booklet is 60+ pages and contains a few written pieces and lots of great pictures. The quality of the printing and paper isn't up to the previous standards of the last three sets, but compared to what one usually gets with remasters, it's great. The bonus material includes alternate mixes and versions, bbc live in studio material, b-sides, compilation tracks, and outtakes. The extra material is not as strong as say the Slanted & Enchanted luxe & redux stuff, but it is still worth while.

So five stars for the set and 1.5 stars for the mastering = 3.25 overall.

If you are a big Pavement fan, you should definately pick up this one. The price is good, the extras plentiful and the remastered sound excellent. If you are new to Pavement and don't own it yet, then buy this expanded edition immediately! The original album has aged very well. From the opener Stereo to closer Fin, it may be their most consistent effort, though not necessarily their most brilliant. It is sort of like a refined version of Wowee Zowee with the most difficult and sloppy parts removed, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. Either way, I love it for the quality of the melodies, the guitar parts, and the hilarious non-sensical lyrics. The extra songs on this expanded version are hit and miss as is to be expected, but they put this album in its proper context and actually improve the overall impact of the album. I'm not a Pavement B-sides collector so I'd never heard the extra tunes before - taken as a whole the extra songs seem more light-hearted and upbeat than the somewhat deliberate and mellow songs on the original album. There are many good ones here, including Roll With the Wind, And then (the Hexx), Slowly Typed (coutryfied version), No Tan Lines, and the Killing Moon, among others. In short, Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition is an example of how delux reissues should be done.

I admit, when Brighten The Corners first came out, I didn't really dig it that much. Wowie Zowie had embedded itsself into my brain (I still consider it their masterpiece- although a very psychotic masterpiece) and I guess I wanted more of that Pavement. Instead it consisted of more fully realized songs, shinier production and most of it pretty mellow. Sure, I liked certain cuts, but I put it away for a long time. Of course I eventually realized its greatness. What's wrong with mellow?

If you're checking out this reissue, you probably know the album, so I'll get to the extras (32 of 'em!). First off, the original album has only twelve songs but they recorded about twice as many. Some were released as b-sides, including "Harness Your Hopes" and "No Tan Lines" which are a few of Pavements best songs, though they never made it to an album (along with "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence" which can be found on the Crooked Rain reissue). "Wanna Mess You Around" is a stab of garage punk which would sit nicely next to "Serpentine Pad".

Some of the stuff that didn't make the cut has never been released, like an early creeping version of "The Hexx" and psychedelic instrumental "Beautiful As A Butterfly", had all of these been included on Brighten The Corners, it would have been a completely different beast, more akin to their earlier more chaotic sound.

Disc two features the best radio sessions I've heard from Pavement (they get quite zany), including their excellent cover of "The Killing Moon", a cover of Faust's "It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" and a crazy version of "Grave Architecture" with some hilarious backing vocals by (I'm guessing) Bob Nastanovich. "Chevy" is a trippier version of "Old To Begin" that sounds like Malkmus either hadn't written the lyrics yet, or forgot every one of 'em and made up new ones on the spot.

A few other oddities included are their tribute to The Clean ("Oddity"), an extended live version of "Type Slowly" (with a kind of The Doors' "The End" guitar thing going on) that makes me really appreciate a song I never cared much for, and their performances from Space Ghost Coast To Coast from 1997 (throughout the episode Space Ghost only refers to them as The Beatles).

I'd say of all the Pavement deluxe editions so far, this one has the best extras. Even the most diehard Pavement freak probably hasn't heard all of these tracks. The original album I'd probably give three & a half stars, the extras push it to five.

These Pavement double-disc deluxe editions that are being released by Matador every 2 years are among the best reissues that I know. The gorgeous packaging, the brilliant design work, the massive booklets stuffed with interesting liner notes and photos, and the tons of extra-tracks set a new standard to the so-called deluxe editions. Brighten The Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition (love the weird sub-titles!) maintains the level.

This is my favourite Pavement album and ever since these deluxe-editions started coming out I had been waiting for its turn.
Brighten The Corners is Pavement's strongest and most consistent album. All these are good "proper" songs. There is no fooling around with thrown away ideas or silly jams. I understand that those are natural ingredients of the Pavement sound, but Wowee Zowee surely needed a bit more editing and quality control. And don't get it wrong, this is far from shinny and polished, this is still 100% low-fi indie rock as according to Pavement. The band still indulges here and there but overall things are much more in control.

Highlights include the college rock hit 'Stereo' with its bumpy bass line and explosive chorus, the catchy 'Shady Lane' and - a personal favourite and my favourite Scott Kannberg song - the chiming urgent 'Date with IKEA' with its byrdsian guitar all over. The album has a double grand finale with two slow-moving ballads 'Starlings Of The Slipstream' and 'Fin' that feature extended epic guitar abuse by Malkmus with loads of feedback and over-bent strings.

Of the 30-plus bonus tracks you can expect the usual treat. Excellent, interesting, funny, pointless, we get a bit of everything. But there are some standout tracks. The embryonic 'The Hexx', then called 'And Then', is as much powerful as it is underdeveloped. The instrumental 'Beautiful As A Batterfly', 'Westie Can Drum', 'Harness Your Hopes', 'Destroy Mater Dei', 'The Classical'.... are all great additions to this album.

The 50-page booklet features a long essay that deals more with the importance of nonsense lyrics in rock songs and, particularly, in Pavement. It's a very interesting text that runs for several pages until it arrives at Brighten The Corners just at closing time. But I miss a bit of historic context in the liner notes - the recording process, what the band was going through.

For the first time in these re-issues, there are no words by Stephen Malkmus or any of the band members or people involved on the making of the record. This brings back the idea that this album is so under-appreciated, probably even by the band - something that really puzzles me.

I have bought every Pavement reissue so far despite owning all of the original CD's. I think this speaks to the high quality of these re-releases...you get a LOT for your money (an entire disc of b-sides, live versions, outtakes, etc...plus extensive liner notes, pictures, etc.). As for Brighten the Corners itself, "Stereo" and "Shady Lane" remain one of my very favorite album-opening combos ever. There are a lot of good Malkmus slow jams on this album ("Type Slowly" being a classic) and "Date with IKEA," Spiral Stairs's moment to shine (a great tune!) This is a really solid Pavement album and as I said earlier, the B-sides and other extras only further illuminate what geniuses these guys were/are. I keep hoping for a Pavement reunion (although Malkmus's last very solid solo album helped satiate that need)...until then, one more reissue to go!

Every two years since 2002 Matador Records has cashed in on what has become their flagship band, 90s indie-rock outfit Pavement, by reissuing a cleaned up and expanded version one of their five proper studio records. Defunct through the whole of this reissue process, Pavement were not the kind of band who would come up with - or likely even be too excited about - such a seemingly capitalist-minded scheme. Fumble around. Make songs for fun. Play shows. Be somewhat happy when anyone listens. That was Pavement, one of the foremost bands of the budding 90s indie-rock scene. But don't fret: these Matador reissues come loaded with purpose.

Lackadaisical as they seemed to be at the time, the classic Pavement lineup - guitarists/vocalists Stephen Malkmus and Spiral Stairs, drummer Steve West, bassist Mark Ibold and utility man Bob Nastanovich - always worked harder than anyone realized, often recording 20, 25 and even 30 songs per studio album (thus the need for these two-disc reissues and their endless bonus tracks and perks). Piece together the quality sounding non-album tracks from any of the reissues, including the latest edition, Brighten the Corners, and you have an additional studio album's worth of Pavement tunes per release. That's right, **per release**. Those not up on their 90s era Matador newsletters need only know one more thing: most of the best songs Malkmus wrote never made it on the proper studio albums. Most have never been heard by the everyday fan.

Officially titled Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creeders Edition, the core original tracklist for the album made for the most consistent, professional and universally approachable album the band ever made. Malkmus' vocals sound far better than they ever had prior; each song comes drenched in its own crop of ideas and pop-turns; the production - assisted this time by Mitch Easter and Bryce Goggin - plays a factor for the first time, thus catering to a wider fanbase; Malkmus (and Spiral Stairs, for that matter) shows that he can **really** play the guitar (and not just in an art-damaged manner); and most importantly, the cutesy quirks, both lyrical and instrumental, feel far less gimmicky. To put it plainly, Pavement grew up in-between the release of their stoned classic, Wowee Zowee, and 1997's Brighten the Corners.

The one-two punch of "Stereo" and "Shady Lane," two of the best singles Malkmus ever wrote, kick things off in a non-pretentious, energetic fashion. The lyrics on these two songs (and much of Brighten) are more **written** than anything the band had offered to that point, with most songs full of one-liners and sung by a slacker who'd finally perfected his **Funnybutwhocares** style. The best song Spiral Stairs ever wrote, "Date With Ikea," is still a head-scratching college radio hit, driven by awkward vocals and one of the band's most sing-along-worthy hooks ever. More so than any other Pavement or Malkmus record, Brighten manages to offer no filler or sub-par material, though the best of the bunch - "Starlings of the Slipstream" and "Fin" - do stand above the rest.

If you have not yet heard the core 12 tracks on this album and consider yourself a fan of pop-, indie-, 90s- or even brit-rock, do yourself the favor. And if you **have** heard the core set, know that the remastered version sounds amazing. It pops, but not in a way that doesn't sound like the pleasantly semi-lo-fi Pavement you've come to know. The main event here, as implied above, is the generous amount of quality bonus material. Let's dig in already ...

It can't be said enough, Pavement were only slackers only in theory. Say you're only a casual Pavement fan (or even a big fan): chances are you didn't collect all the band's EPs, singles and compilation tracks. Be that the case, then yes, as Malkmus said some years ago, you **do** get a **whole extra album's worth** of Brighten-era studio originals with this reissue - 14 proper studio songs to be exact. While seven of these tunes have more or less never been heard, the other half have been underground favorites for years - songs like "Harness Your Hopes," "Roll With the Wind," "No Tan Lines" and "Westie Can Drum" are all greatest hits caliber tunes that were included on EPs. So that's the major draw, but wait, there's more. Seven live-in-studio songs from the Brighten tracklist, five alternate versions of album cuts and four excellent studio-quality cover songs, including a must-hear take on Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon."

Years ago Malkmus said two then unbelievable things about the material left off the his band's 1997 classic: 1) The cutting room floor stuff could've make for a whole second album; 2) That album would be better than the album the band released. Now that we know that to be true, or at least plausible, then why, we have to wonder, didn't Matador put out these studio songs as a "lost Pavement record?" Generous as they're being with the bonus material, a more focused approach would've much better suited the band's typically album-minded fanbase. Oh well; it's a good problem to have, even if it doesn't much add to the band's legacy.

Brighten the Corners may not have been the best album of 1997 (OK Computer, duh) or even Pavement's best (Slanted and Enchanted, du-uh!), but today, in retrospect, it stands as one of the very best examples of a solid, front-to-back good, indie rock album. Timeless. Cool. Strange. Worthy of obsessive listening. It's the kind of record that can take an audiophile from their teen years to their 30s and beyond. Now fleshed out and tweaked, Brighten the Corners, initially considered to be a somewhat misunderstood (and therefore overlooked) transitional work, should finally get the attention it's always deserved. (Greg Locke)

A great CD set, wished I would have bought it years ago. Lot's of extra tracks on this 2 CD set.

I like the original quite a bit, but it has a certain darkened mood to it, dominated by transport is arranged, type slowly, and fin, that could be offputting if you never wanted pavement to settle down. The Nicene Creedence Edition reveals BTC to have been choice as much as change. The more light-hearted material of a familiar pavement album is here, and the secret sixth album is pretty nearly as good as the five that they did make. The other re-releases are nice, each with some gems (box elder on wowee zowee, picket fence on CRCR are examples), but this is the one to get. Taken as a whole, the Nicene Creedence Edition is Pavement's best effort, which is saying a lot.

First off, let it be known that I have been a fan of Pavement since their first album. I have seen them numerous times on tour during the nineties. I am such a geek that I even won a "Cut Your Hair" poster at a concert. Regardless of that, I have been checking out Pavement's reissue of "Brighten The Corners," and I can attest that this thing is full of good music. The standard edition that will be released on Dec. 9, 2008, contains 32 B-sides, which document this era in the band's history.

The massive amount of material that is included is exemplary which makes picking out my favorite tracks difficult. Some early standout tracks include, "Harness Your Hopes," "Roll With The Wind," "The Killing Moon" cover and "Nigel."

i replaced my original cd and all the cd singles with this double cd. any Pavement fan will not be disappointed with this. even though a lot of my friends seemed to have fallen off the pavement by the time this first came out , it really was a great album. all the extra tracks are good too , Pavement never released a bad song. the packaging seems to feel like recycled paper and lacks the glossy paper of the first three reissues, but it's not falling apart and feels sturdy.
do i really have to wait another 2 years for the next/last Pavement reissue ?