Blog: Stereogum

It must be some cosmically appropriate coincidence that Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted and the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head came out within a couple of days of each other. Slanted And Enchanted helped define one long-lasting strain of '90s underground culture: Obliquely smirky wit, sidelong guitar jams, the persistent sense that you couldn't tell whether somebody was making fun of you or not. But Check Your Head practically invented another, very different strain. In its genetic fusion of rap and punk and '70s stoner-culture and head-rush pop-cult referentialism, Check Your Head [...]