Pavement: Wowee Zowee (2LP) [MATADOR]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set spreads Pavement's longest album across three sides in a gatefold jacket. Rolling Stone put it in its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Gatefold jacket
• Three sides of music

About the album

Fresh off Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and two years of touring, Pavement had every reason to go for the obvious follow-up. Instead they drove to Easley Recording in Memphis in November 1994, with all five members in the room for the first time on a Pavement record, and came out ten days later with a mountain of songs.

Wowee Zowee goes everywhere. "We Dance" opens with a woozy shuffle, "Rattled by the Rush" wobbles and sways, "Grounded" is one of Stephen Malkmus's loveliest slow burners, and "Father to a Sister of Thought" drifts in on pedal steel. In between come blasts of punk, noise and country, with Bob Nastanovich and Steve West keeping the wheels on, plus cryptic, funny lyrics in every corner. Doug Easley and Davis McCain engineered, and Bryce Goggin mixed.

Over the years it has become the Pavement record fans argue about at parties and then quietly put on when everyone's gone home. Matador later expanded it as the Sordid Sentinels Edition, but the album still sounds best as Malkmus and co. first sequenced it, sprawl and all.

Also at Kops: more Pavement on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Matador (cat# ole-130-0), a reissue of the 1995 album.