Watery, Domestic in Bloomington, MN

Released between
Slanted & Enchanted
and
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
, the
Watery, Domestic
EP captures
Pavement
in a transitional phase, as the band began to abandon the static-laden
guitar rock
of their early recordings and started to move toward a cleaner sound. Most of the innovations of
have to do with recording techniques, yet the songs are certainly fine. The cleaner production brings
's inherent fractured melodicism into sharper focus, which benefits
"Texas Never Whispers,"
the wistful
"Frontwards,"
and the bright, nearly jangly
"Shoot the Singer,"
but the slow grind of
"Lions (Linden)"
would have been mesmerizing regardless of the production, or the lack of it. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine