Slanted And Enchanted — now there’s an album worth celebrating! Pavement’s brilliant, game-changing full-length debut came out 30 years ago today, and the band is indeed commemorating the anniversary in myriad ways, less than two weeks after releasing the long-awaited deluxe edition of their swan song Terror Twilight.

There is, inevitably, a vinyl reissue, though not of the expansive Farewell Horizontal variety (or a Luxe & Reduxe scale, to throw it back to the genesis of the Pavement reissue industry). Rather, the original LP is being reissued on red/white/black splatter vinyl. It’s coming out in August, about a month before Pavement’s reunion tour comes to North America.

Furthermore, the band is selling “lovingly detailed” replicas of the original demo cassette version of Slanted And Enchanted that they circulated to labels and industry tastemakers in hopes of building buzz and landing a record deal. The tapes feature an early version of the finished album with a different running order and some alternate track titles. A version of S&E that doesn’t start with “Summer Babe (Winter Version)” might be even more aggravating than the alternate Terror Twilight tracklist the recent reissue deployed on vinyl and streaming, but I guess it’s different when you’re slavishly re-creating a historical document rather than revisiting an obviously bad idea that was rightly abandoned. “Here” does make some kind of sense as a closer, though, and “Baptist Blacktick” was good enough to be on the album even if its eventual fate as a B-side feels right. Anyway, they’ve titled this tape Courting Shutdown Offers.

Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, Pavement co-founders Stephen Malkmus and Spiral Stairs talked with Matt Sweeney for a new episode of The Matador Revisionist History Podcast. I haven’t gotten to listen yet, but subjects discussed reportedly include their recent reunion tour preparations, dropping out of college to tour with Sonic Youth, and writing “In The Mouth A Desert” after an Earth Day mescaline trip. As far as I know they don’t touch on this meme Pavement’s Twitter account (your best online source for Pavement shitposting) retweeted this week:

Check out the reissue tracklists and the podcast below and revisit our 20th anniversary S&E retrospective here.

VINYL TRACKLIST:
01 “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”
02 “Trigger Cut / Wounded-Kite At :17”
03 “No Life Signed Her”
04 “In The Mouth A Desert”
05 “Conduit For Sale!”
06 “Zurich Is Stained”
07 “Chesley’s Little Wrists”
08 “Loretta’s Scars”
09 “Here”
10 “Two States”
11 “Perfume-V”
12 “Fame Throwa”
13 “Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era”
14 “Our Singer”

CASSETTE TRACKLIST:
01 “Chesley’s Little Wrists”
02 “Jackals, False Grails: The Lonesome Era”
03 “No Life Signed Her”
04 “Two States”
05 “Trigger Cut”
06 “Fame Throwa”
07 “Pain Smiles”
08 “The Wounded Kite”
09 “Summer Babe”
10 “Perfume-V”
11 “My First Mine”
12 “Baptist Blacktick”
13 “Loretta’s Scars”
14 “Pillowjack”
15 “Here”

The limited vinyl run of Slanted And Enchanted and the Courting Shutdown Offers cassette are out 8/12 via Matador.