Brighten the Corners

Pavement: Stephen Malkmus, Mark Ibold, Spiral Stairs, Bob Nastanovich, Steve West.
A surprisingly divisive album when it came out in 1997, BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS was seen as too much of a softball to champions of the bizarro WOWEE ZOWEE, while those left scratching their heads after ZOWEE actually welcomed it. Whereas the latter has seemed more obviously great with each passing year, CORNERS remains what it always was--a catchy set of rockers and ballads, frontloaded with the attention-grabbing "Stereo," which gives the album its quirk. (Real fans know the secret that the last three or four tracks are the real classics.)
The 2008 deluxe reissue of BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS contains a second disc of rare, live, and unreleased tracks, including the band's cover of the Clean's "Oddity" and a truncated take on Faust's "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl."