All the young groups know

Pavement - 'Our Singer' (Slanted and Enchanted - 1992)

Pavement's debut album Slanted and Enchanted is one which makes me think of what it would have been like if I'd been born fifteen years earlier and 5,000 miles further west. It is an album about the possibilities and paralysis of youth; you want to climb the highest summit but don't know how to take the first steps. In my view, Stephen Malkmus manages to get across the juxtaposition of being young, having your adult life ahead of you and being largely clueless on what to do with all that potential. 

'Our Singer' is a song that Malkmus has spoken of in just that way; In 2018, he told Rolling Stone.

We were running out of time recording the album, and I was like, 'I got this last one. I'm not even going to bother teaching it or doing any over-dubs, just get in here and play a waltz beat.' Just some frustrated California 22-year-old. It has a certain directness and freshness that makes it a nice closing for the album.

I picture him imagining the thought process of how he might ask a girl out when he sings, "I've dreamt of this, but it never comes." and of course, he doesn't ask her out. He may even be more attached to the perfect possibilities than the messy imperfections of reality.

In that Rolling Stone interview, Malkmus mentions The Fall's 'Hip Priest', a track from their 1982 album Hex Enduction Hour from which Pavement lifted the skittish drum pattern. Much like Elastica, a few years later, the band is sometimes needlessly derided for wearing their magpie tendencies on their sleeves.

It's a down-tempo ending recorded in a fashion that is lo-fi even for this album, with only one word in the song having more than two syllables. Suppose it was committed to tape more recently. In that case, I'd imagine there would be some demos laid down on an iPhone, such is the languid sense of the track being whispered into the wind, rather than something that was intended to be captured for prosperity.

I think singing about the sun coming up in a closing track would be seen by many as representing a new dawn, a fresh start. It is not an image we readily associate with endings, but, again, when you are young, the sun rising is an ending.

It's telling you to go to bed.