My corners are pretty bright. That's what happens when you're 31.

I'm happy that my 31st birthday landed pretty close to the release of the "Brighten the Corners" reissue. Owing to the Napa trip, I actually didn't get a chance to listen to it until this week. And in anticipation of the reissue, I had abstained from all but one song on this album for close to a year. (The one song is "Transport is Arranged," and that one ended up on a Baltimore-themed mix that I made this spring.)

The nice thing about this album is...that it's just so nice. Compared to Pavement's more abrasive sound, this is definitely the one that sounds the most mature and calm. That's also its downfall in a sense - that it's too pleasant to be anyone's favorite Pavement album. But it does contain a number of fantastic mid-tempo songs that feature some fine moments of Stephen Malkmus-isms. Through the distorted prism of his lyrics, you hear someone worried about aging, about finding a permanent place in the world. And if you don't agree, tell my why else would this album include a lyrics sheet for the first and only time in Pavement history?

Alex Ross has a great essay about rock lyrics in general and Malkmus's in particular here. My favorite moments on the album are the fragments of logic that emerge out of a seemingly light-weight moment. They cause you to re-evaluate the whole song - "Simply put, I want to grow old / Dying does not meet my expectations..." Malkmus declares in his quasi-aristocratic whisp in the same song where he confesses - or perhaps mockingly teases? - that he wants to cry when thinks about "the mental energy you wasted on these wedding invitations."

For all the sweet moments, there are some cruel ones - like the line, "this slap is a gift / because your cheeks have lost their luster." But there is, on the whole, a truly inviting warmth and playful spirit that inhabit the album (and the best outtakes, like "Harness Your Hopes.") I'm a sucker for Malkmus gently teasing the left - he sees elves though "the liberaaaaaaaaals claim they don't exist but I know they do, yeah," - and he complains about how he's "sick of being misread / by men in dashikis / and their leftist weeklies..."

The pure Pavement moments are the best. "One of us is a cigar stand / and one of us is an incandescent blue guillotine." No idea what that means, but when you get into the rest of that particular song ("Old to begin") you hear Malkmus repeatedly calling himself "old to begin / I will set ya back set ya back set ya..." This was as close as pre-Terror Twilight Pavement would come to a break-up song, with the implication being, I think, that one of the two people is about to be figuratively decapitated and smoked.

And I've always had a soft-spot for the cheekiness spoken-word joshing of "Blue Hawaiian" - which includes the meaning of aloha, warm thoughts about the definition of 'home,' and a great bit of self-referential wit: "If the capital's and it's followed by a T, then it's probably me!"

I was listening to "We Are Underused" this morning on my way in, expecting to hear in it the same snide commentary on being a hyperliterate over-educated affluent person whose gifts are going to waste in the professional world, when I heard the song in a different light entirely. The verses alternate between exhortations to thank the host for a great roast and droll commentary, in the stulted manner of polite dinner conversation. I had it all wrong - the "we" isn't a post-collegiate smart-aleck, and the people doing the under-using of the "we" aren't our parents' generation. The "we" is all of us, and we are underutilizing each other by engaging in soul-crushing dinner parties and polite banter instead of fully exploring each other's humanity. Maybe.

I should probably say something about the B-sides, but I won't. They're good. Prevous reissues of Pavement's albums have been successful because those albums sounds just as great now as they did then. The cool thing about this one is that an album that was only so-so at the time actually sounds great now.

And Malkmus was my age when it was recorded! Look at that. I just tied the whole thing up in a neat little package. I should change my screen persona to "no-unresolved-plotlines citizen."

Enough disjointendess for today. Till tomorrow, or some other day...