“I actually saw Pavement at their mid-90s peak, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t paying much attention. I guess I’d pretty much had it with so-called ROCK music at the time, for which I’d blame Grunge mostly, all that flannel and kerranging and ponderous sincerity. But jump ahead maybe five years to the end of the century and I guess I was finally ready for the beer-in-one-hand-joint-in-the-other shambolic genius of Stephen Malkmus and his crowd, everything crystallizing in the lead-off track from 1994’s Crooked Rain Crooked Rain – a full minute of sloppy mucking around, chasing first a groove, then a melody, before the song finally finds itself (and in fact, the melody’s a direct rip-off of an old Buddy Holly tune) but man does it click! But is it a Silent Kit or a Silent Kid? Or am I fool to even wonder?” (Philip Random)