Sales of Pavement’s fuzzed-out masterpiece don’t stack up to the rounding errors on Nevermind, but its influence on Beck, Blur, Radiohead and countless other musicians of the 90s is incalculable. Lead singer and former Whitney Museum of Art security guard Stephen Malkmus expressed alienation with the same lo-fi guitar grit of Kurt Cobain, but his lyrics and vocals are models of cryptic passion. “Summer Babe” could pass for a rougher than normal bit of classic rock if Malkmus weren’t singing, “She waits there in the levee wash, mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar” before finally getting to the money line—”You’re my summer babe!” Somehow his word salads communicated both the ennui of a suburban smart ass as well as an awareness that ennui isn’t tragic. As Malkmus yelped on “Conduit for Sale”: “Between here and there is better than either here or there.”