Pavement should be remembered, among other things, for hosting one of music’s most puzzling songwriting dynamics.

Stephan Malkmus and Scott Kannberg’s collaborations on the band’s five masterful recordings in the 1990s were everything but pop.

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Since their split in 1999, the two have gone separate ways. Malkmus went on to a successful solo career and Kannberg went on to front Preston School of Industry.

Ironically, the two now gravitate toward and embrace the simple pop songs they so harshly avoided.

“Monsoon,” the second release from the Preston School of Industry, finds Kannberg again using his alter ego, Spiral Stairs

Loaded with acoustic guitars, the 10 tracks are as gentle on the senses as the album’s namesake is violent.

“So Many Ways” is a monotone ballad, purposely barren of emotion until the song’s waning moments.

Tracks like “Walk Of A Girl” and “If The Straits Of Magellan Should Ever Run Dry” will have as hard a time denying the Bob Dylan influence as “Escalation Breeds Escalation” does with Beatles comparisons.

Galloping drum lines in “Get Your Crayons Out!” provide the album’s most haunting moments.

“The Furnace Sun,” the album’s opening pop ditty, is the record’s strongest song. The riff-laden electric anthem “Line It Up” is close behind.

Denouncing music roots to undergo a creative 180 seems true to the nonconformist approach Pavement spearheaded more than a decade ago.