On April 8th, Matador will release Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal, an exhaustive 45-track reissue of the band’s much-loved fifth and final album. The new special edition compiles the remastered original album, B-sides, home demos, rehearsal tapes, era-appropriate live recordings, and even the roughtracks from Pavement’s scrapped session at Sonic Youth’s Echo Canyon studio. Altogether, it features 28 unreleased tracks.
The 4×LP and 2×CD editions will include a book with never-before-seen photos and commentary/context from band members Mark Ibold, Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, Spiral Stairs, and Steve West as well as producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck). The LP will restore Godrich’s suggested sequence–which foregrounds the album’s headiest songs –while the CD preserves the final track order assembled by the band.
Originally released in1999, Terror Twilight marked a departure from Pavement’s established operating methods. Which is to say that it was recorded with a big-time producer in an expensive studio. However, for all the talk of “polish” and “precision” it’s still very much a Pavement record. And a great one. Like every Pavement album that preceded it, Terror Twilight thrills and confounds. Often at the same time. Twenty-two years on, the songs remain moody, strange, and eminently deserving of re-celebration.