Brighten the Corners by Pavement

Brighten the Corners, Pavement's fourth album, came out on Matador on February 11, 1997, and it's the record where the Stockton slackers tidied up their act, a little. They cut it at Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on a tip from either Matador or Helium's Mary Timony, as Malkmus remembers it, producing mostly with Bryce Goggin; when Goggin left, Easter stepped in for about a week. The band recorded several takes of songs before picking one, edited heavily, and then did the vocals separately in New York.

The slack is still there, but the songs are tighter and the guitars of Stephen Malkmus and Scott Kannberg ring out cleaner, with Mark Ibold's bass, Steve West's drums and Bob Nastanovich's extra noise underneath. "Stereo" and "Shady Lane" are the keepers. The title winks at an old gospel hymn by Homer Rodeheaver, and the reviews were glowing. Matador expanded it in 2008 as the Nicene Creedence Edition.

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