Between the release of Preston School of Industry's 2001 debut and the recording of their upcoming album, Monsoon, frontman Scott Kannberg relocated from the Bay Area to Seattle. But despite the title, Monsoon, slated for a January 20th release, doesn't sound like it was written underneath Seattle drizzle -- the album is chock-full of sunny California melodies.

"I moved to a whole new environment up here," says the former Pavement guitarist. "I'm not used to the rain. Moving away was kind of hard in the beginning. Seattle's a challenge."

Wilco joined in for "Get Your Crayons Out." Plied with BBQ chicken and salmon, beer and diet Coke, they ransacked Kannberg's basement studio for instrumentation and gave the track the kitchen sink treatment.

"Jeff [Tweedy] did some really amazing guitar parts," Kannberg says. "It sounds like a jug band or an early Velvet Underground bootleg or something. Glen [Kotche] found some pots and pans in the basement and started playing those. I gave Leroy [Bach] some old Pavement ashtrays that we have, and he used those as percussion instruments. He was really excited about that."

Kannberg says Monsoon is a "more personal" album than All This Sounds Gas, and it's more political as well. Songs like "Escalation Breeds Escalation" and "So Many Ways" have barbed lyrical hooks embedded in their warm melodies.

"Those songs are definitely political," Kannberg says. "'So Many Ways' is commenting on the state of our country. It shouldn't be like this. It's embarrassing. I don't want to give up on it, but it's hard these days."

Upon his return from a six-week tour of Australia, Kannberg plans to dig through the vaults for bonus material slated for a planned expanded, re-mastered version of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain targeted for release next year. "I gotta go through all my own archives, all the songs we never put out," he says. "There's probably five or six songs that were totally unreleased from around that period, and probably a few demos that we actually did with our old drummer Gary [Young]. I think we can salvage a few of those."

COLIN DEVENISH
(November 14, 2003)