Since
Pavement switched course with each record -- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was nothing like
Slanted & Enchanted, and
Brighten the Corners was decidedly different from the brilliant, warped
Wowee Zowee -- it's a little disarming to realize that
Terror Twilight merely deepens the sound of its predecessor. Guitars burst to the forefront every so often -- most notably on the dense jam "Platform Blues" and the shouted choruses of "Billie" -- yet they're usually used as texture. Nothing rocks hard and "The Hexx," which was heard on the
Brighten tour as a metallic epic, has been transformed into a surrealistic dream, reminiscent of
the Velvet Underground's "Ocean." That's typical of
Terror Twilight -- it's reflective, with the occasional flight of fancy that fits neatly into the laid-back flow. It's also the tightest record
Pavement ever made, largely due to producer
Nigel Godrich, who helped reign in excessive tendencies in
Radiohead and
Beck and does the same here. The band still sounds like
Pavement -- their loping interplay is unmistakable -- and
Stephen Malkmus' songs are typically dense and literate, yet they're easier to digest. That, along with the lack of
Spiral Stairs songs, gives
Terror Twilight a cohesion missing even on earlier
Pavement albums, no matter how great they were. All the focus makes the album feel a little less like
Pavement -- after all, this is a band whose imperfections were among their most endearing qualities -- and a bit more like
Malkmus' first solo album, which it essentially is. Though it's hard not to miss the gloriously messy sprawl of
Pavement at their peak, this carefully crafted, languid recasting of their signature sound is effective and winds up as a fitting, bittersweet farewell for the best band of the '90s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine