Matador has released the list for their Pavement comp, and has announced the winners of the guess-the-tracklist contest.

The list is... odd. Out of 23 songs, there is only one song from their last record, "Terror Twilight", and only two from "Wowee Zowee". While the former is pretty widely considered to be their weakest record, it definitely has more than one strong song; and the latter is one of their best records, with plenty of good songs to choose from. Instead, Matador took five songs each from "Slanted and Enchanted" and "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain". While those are admittedly their two best records, focusing so closely on them gives a distorted picture of Pavement's overall career - which is what I thought the point of the compilation was. At least that's the impression I got from the description Matador used when they announced the comp. Now obviously Matador wants to sell records, so they want to load the Best Of with as many strong songs as they can both to encourage sales of the comp itself, and to entice people who buy the comp to go buy the back catalog. But I'm not sure their list is the optimal for either of those goals.

But, never mind me. I'm just cranky 'cause my list didn't win. :)