With their fourth full-length release, Brighten the Corners, Pavement have taken their unique brand of post-modern rock in a mellower and more cohesive direction then on previous outings. SPINonline music editor Andy Gensler spoke at length with Pavement's prime mover/lead singer/songwriter Stephen Malkmus about the new record, the Chemical Brothers, and of course, bowling.

INTERVIEWER: I've been reading that Brighten the Corners is a return to the accessibility of Crooked Rain, following your more avant last release Wowee Zowee, do you think that's true or are people just making sweeping generalizations?
STEVE MALKMUS: I don't know, I haven't been paying attention to what anyone is saying to tell you the truth. For me, every one of our records is of its own time and surroundings. The fact that the same people are writing the songs and mixing the records and we don't really have any outside help, makes it all almost the same song.

I heard you've been listening to a lot of `60s British folk bands like Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band.
Yeah, I like those bands a lot. Now there is this kind of ultra-trend with bands like Beck and the Beastie Boys appropriating African-American music forms--the Stones did it to great effect. But we're just looking for another way because we're always going to end up being more of the arty Beatles boys instead of the Stones boys. I went for the Celtic/folk thing because it's interesting to me how they play their instruments and how it really hasn't been milked to death.

Speaking of milked to death, Harper's Bazaar, Newsweek, Time, and Mirabella are all interviewing the Chemical Brothers. But there is a lot of interesting and dynamic stuff coming out of the electronic world -- DJ Shadow, Daft Punk, Orbital etc. And like Pavement they're also "post-modern" and create music from disparate genres and mix them together. Are you guys listening to that stuff, and are you at all influenced by it?
Yeah, I listen to it, I like things like that, but what we're doing is completely different. To me that's urban trendy music, and I love hearing that. I want to stay current, but I guess we're more of a museum piece--playing our own instruments, group interaction and dynamics. Those bands are more like the modern corporations--downsized, '90s sleek and efficient.

Do you find yourself going to rock shows and feeling like you've seen it a million times before?
I do get tons of yawns. But things are new and exciting the first time you see them. It's like when you saw the Butthole Surfers for first time 15 years ago. If you saw the Chemical Brothers 20 times--unless they prove to be Bowie-esque geniuses of reinvention--you know your going to forget about them next year. Unless you're just a devourer of culture and it is such a cheap thing that you can just eat it and shit it right out.
Hopefully you want to have things that are sort of epic and that you keep listening to a million times and are like, "That's a great record!" instead of "Oh, I just have one Chemical Brothers record." This is your post-modern cannon, so you must have one Chemical Brothers record and one Pavement Slanted and Enchanted record. But that's okay too because I agree there shouldn't be a cult of genius--you need to have both Ernest Hemingway and Trent Reznor's works.
What's kind of cool is that the music industry is losing a lot of money and focus right now--in the top 10 there's like five soundtracks, and there's no real definitive sound in the mainstream. But at the margins you're seeing something dynamic and kind of revolutionary happening. That's true. And its good that these stranger, weirder indie things are doing well. The Chemical Brothers are cool. Two years ago they said Slanted and Enchanted was their favorite album.

How was it to work with Mitch Easter (of Let's Active and producer of REM's Mu rmer and Reckoning)? How much influence did he have on this record?
Scott Kannberg (guitarist) said he would just come in and say "That's Fab!" That's pretty much it, he would recommend effects or something if he had them, but he wasn't interfering. You never felt like he was looking over your shoulder or telling you how to play something.

You recorded with him in Kernersville, North Carolina. What was that like?
There's not much techno going on there. There's no Photek remixes there's no one that gives a flying shit about that stuff out there.

But there is hip-hop right?
Yeah, like Bone-Thugs-n-Harmony, that's like radical there (laughs)Or the Fugees.

What did you do down there?
We went bowling a lot. There's this famous woman that's in the Pro Bowlers Association Hall of Fame who opened a bowling alley there. Her name was Patty something. I had a crush on her actually. But she was married. She looked like a housewife in a pre-Fab suburb, kind of thin and from the gold country of California and how women look out there-- like 49ERs fans. She was pretty.

You recorded in Easter's 1880's Tobacco Farm House studio, what was that like?
It's not even a studio. It's just his house, it's not really been properly built yet. It's just been wired for sound. It's a really mellow reflective place. We recorded it all in 12 days.

In your lyrics you keep making references to letters and initials, I also read that you're a crossword puzzle fanatic. Are you preoccupied with words and language?
Yeah, more than probably most of your readers. I'm not like obsessed or anything. I'm not like Will Self - he's got a sick amount of weird words that I never have any idea of their meanings. I don't want to be totally fetishistic about it. I like to try to keep it in the realm of slang words I ordinarily use. If there's a weird word that I think is cool like jitney--that's not that weird, but it sounds cool--I'll use it. There's mostly a virtue of necessity in this band that people don't see. I mean I don't want to make it out like it's just bullshit...but a lot of it is. It's creativity forced by necessity.

Where does the title Brighten the Corners come from?
It's probably in the Bible, I'm sure it is.

This record sounds warmer and more jangley than previous Pavement records.
Yeah, but it's too slow to be pop really, and too reflective as far as I'm concerned. I don't expect it to catch on except for with a certain kind of weird person. I mean except for Built To Spill, what else are they going to do until the next Sebadoh album comes out?

Scott Kannberg says this album is more realized than Wowed Zowee as it was planned from start to finish. Do you agree?
Yeah, I guess so. We were at [drummer Steve West's] house and we practiced a couple of times, the process was still fairly open-ended. It's always like that; we just record these songs and we don't know how far they're going to go or if they're good or not.

The wail on "We Are Underused" is a pretty interesting vocal technique.
The Aerosmith scream? That was from the rough take. I was just trying to make the band rock more. I'll do that scream during the guide vocals, it means like rock. It's better than saying something dumb like "Rock now!" I was trying to do something more organic and make them think that I was Steven Tyler.

What are your favorite songs on this record?
I don't know, I guess I like "Transport is Arranged," "Blue Hawaiian," "We are Underused," or maybe "Type Slowly" or maybe I imagined that to be even be better than it is. I don't really like "Embassy Row" much or that last song too ["Fin"] that much.

"Embassy Row" seems like a natural single.
Yeah, it's a song Offspring fans could like.

This album seems to find you guys in a positive state of mind.
Well yeah, I guess, but doing all these interviews can change things. Overall I think everyone's pretty happy.