By the time they’d recorded their fourth album, slacker gods Pavement had done off-kilter artsiness, fractured improv rock and guitar-shaman freakoutery; now it was time to, like, write some songs. This 1997 set showcases the band at its breeziest and most—gasp!—professional, as singer Stephen Malkmus muses slightly less cryptically than usual over loose-limbed guitars and honest-to-goodness hooks. This deluxe edition ups the casual factor a bit, adding a bonus disc of tossed-off B-sides and cheerfully sloppy covers, but it still sounds better crafted than anything they did before or since. Pavement eyed their maturation warily: Newly married guitarist Scott Kannberg contributes ambivalent songs about creeping domesticity (“Date w/ IKEA,” “Passat Dream”), and the newly 30 Malkmus sings about weddings and dinner parties like he’s watching something circle the drain. Is it youth? Possibility? A band that would break up one album later? If the answer is never clear, it’s only because they weren’t sure, either.

DOWNLOAD “Stereo,” “Blue Hawaiian,” “Starlings of the Slipstream”