Slanted & Enchanted
Two smart young college guys with a bunch of catchy,  cryptic songs and a taste for peculiar sonics go into a studio with a showboating older drummer and come out with one of the definitive indie-rock albums. Beneath its coils of raw distortion and screaming-for-the-hell-of-it, Pavement's first full-length disc gets over on the strength of stellar songwriting and ingenious melodicism. Sometimes Steve Malkmus's sly, evocative word-games reveal genuine emotion ("Here"), and sometimes they just pay tribute to his favorite bands ("Conduit For Sale!" is a nod to the Fall), but these songs are unconventional in a way that set the convention for bands that came after them.--Douglas Wolk