Pavement

Talk about your expanded albums. This gotta-have two-CD re-release of beloved Stockton indie-rock band Pavement’s second album, originally released in 1994, expands that record’s original dozen-song lineup to 49 tracks. The first disc begins with Crooked Rain Crooked Rain in sequence and fills out the rest of the set with cuts from various EPs and compilations. Disc two contains some interesting stuff, all of it previously unreleased—eight tracks from aborted sessions with former drummer Gary Young, 13 from rehearsal-space demos in New York with the then-new lineup, and four from a 1994 BBC John Peel session. The set—priced like a single CD—comes with a spiffy 64-page book, too. Yeah, band resident genius Steve Malkmus is off-handedly brilliant, and Pavement is the Dead of the ’90s.