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Pavement: Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition
Matador, 1995/2006
Rating: 4.7
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Posted:
November 15,
2006
By
Laurence Station
Wowee Zowee is far and away Pavement’s loosest, loopiest release.
At a time when the pressure to capitalize on the surprising success of
sophomore effort Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and possibly break
through to the Big Time -- or, at the very least, craft another song as
irresistibly catchy as “Cut Your Hair” -- must have been intense, Pavement
simply indulged in recording the goofiest, most stylistically scattershot
creation in the capital-I indie rock band’s catalog. Eschewing the hip
angularity of Slanted & Enchanted and the aforementioned Crooked
Rain, Wowee Zowee is the aural equivalent of a Mobius strip,
making no effort to hide its exaggeratedly elastic and silly tendencies.
Rather than beat a full retreat from the wealth and fame most bands crave,
Pavement rumbled right over such Madison Avenue expectations, neither
apologizing in a self-consciously experimental way via the music nor aiming
for some arcane, highbrow concept piece to legitimize the group’s elevated
profile.
Following in the tradition of recent
Slanted
and Crooked deluxe
anniversary sets, Matador’s vault-plundering Wowee reissue contains
50 songs (many of them previously unreleased), serving up the remastered
proper album, related B-sides, tracks from the excellent (and long out of
print) Pacific Trim EP, live cuts and assorted outtakes and alternate
mixes/renditions from the original sessions. It’s refreshing to see a label
basically unload everything it has with these reissues, rather than holding
a few choice nuggets back for later profit-driven incarnations. Matador (and
the guys in Pavement) get it right by offering a high-quality package at an
agreeable price, essentially delivering the last word on an album’s format.
The good news, for Pavement fans, is the thought of forthcoming bundles of similar
high
quality for the band’s final two albums.
Wowee Zowee itself is usually pegged as the hip Pavement album to
name-check in pointless but engaging "most-favored" debates. What it lacks
in terms of inspired songcraft and DIY smarts (Slanted) or stellar
sequencing and consistency (Crooked), it more than makes up for
thanks to unburdened, freewheeling musicianship (Stephen Malkmus’ guitar
work never sounded more inventive or expressive) and the sheer exuberance of
a set that sounds like it was being made up as the sessions went along. From
the elegant, faux-Anglo opener “We Dance” to the snotty punk of “Serpentine
Pad” and the swirling fuzz-drone of “Kennel District,” Pavement tries a
little bit of everything here. Even more amazing is how well it all holds
together. The sheer audacity of styles actually unifies the whole, rather
than tearing it apart. Frustratingly, the brief, waterlogged “Western Homes”
still closes the album when the preceding “Half a Canyon,” with its manic,
wonderfully stretched out, guitar-driven fadeout, would have been more
appropriate.
The four songs comprising the Pacific Trim EP are the equal of the
bulk of Wowee’s proper tracks, with “Gangsters & Pranksters” serving
up the quintessential Pavement couplet, “I’ve got all this Harvard LSD / Why
won’t anyone fuck me?” Other highlights include a performance for Australian
radio from 1994, in which early, live incarnations of future Wowee
tracks get interesting workouts, and the brilliant “No More Kings,” which
originally appeared on the Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks compilation. As if
to reinforce the curved (rather than, er, slanted) nature of the
entire exercise, the deluxe Wowee doubles back on itself, closing
with an alternate mix of the opening “We Dance.”
Most importantly, Wowee Zowee still sounds fresh, which is primarily
due to the casually improvisational nature of the work. Nothing feels forced
here; it’s as if a bunch of friends entered a studio and riffed on whatever
ideas were floating around at the time. From a nostalgic viewpoint, Pavement
would never sound so carefree and band-oriented again. Wowee Zowee is
a testament to what can be accomplished when a group follows a creative,
rather than a corporate, muse.
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