Listening to Pavement's new album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, you get a feeling and a mood that trancend any one song. You get a feeling Pavement jock SM is growing up.

SM sits in his Lazy-Boy, trying to convince himself not to take the job at his dad's hardware store. Fingering a joint and brushing back his greasy Michael J. Fox locks, he knows he's in no hurry.

After selling 90,000 units of his last album, Slanted and Enchanted, he has almost stopped nursing the thought of getting a straight job.

SM thinks working 9 to 5 at The Tool Shed and playing gigs on the weekends at local Stockton, Calif., clubs is a wasted life. He has too much style for that. Like Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller, he wants to have both a career and street credibility -- songs that last longer than the average life of a buzz clip.

Praised and confused, SM is sick of college "chicks" and exposs in Spin magazine. Unlike Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller, he knows there's more to life than Winona Ryder.

With a growing waste line from skipping too many classes at University of Virginia to sit and ponder Velvet Underground and Fall riffs, SM knows slacker evolution didn't start with J. Mascis or Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot." SM can't quarantine the past.

Tuning his old tape-deck radio to that new wave station where they play the Swell Maps alongside the Circle Jerks alongside the Rolling Stones, he realizes there can be more than just one Pavement sound. SM knows you don't have to pump up the volume.

Tired of being tired of whooshing static, SM gets up out of his Lazy-Boy and fingers his fender for some wah-wah riffs and hooks -- hooks to base a career on.

Among the land of tract homes and concrete rivers, SM's Pavement has grown from indie-rock drones to American treasures. Opting for a little more pop, SM knows punk's 15 minutes are a short 15 minutes.

By owning up to rock's past, the band has surpassed the musical highs of Slanted and Enchanted and, in the process, makes its sound its own.

Sitting in his living room and brooding over his future, SM has taken back Pavement from the rock critics and scenesters who had hoped to pin him down as a slacker with an attitude.

And with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, he proves Pavement has more to offer than the band was ever willing to admit. Maybe enough to settle down.