Wowee Zowee


Wowee Zowee is the third studio album by American indie rock band Pavement. It was released on April 11, 1995 by Matador Records. The album showcased a more experimental and spontaneous side of the group, returning them to the clatter and unpredictability of their early recordings after the more traditional rock sound of 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.
Rolling Stone speculated that the relative success of their previous album was a reason for this album's eclectic nature; the magazine's review claimed Pavement were afraid of success. Stephen Malkmus refuted this, saying that, while his judgment may have been clouded by excessive marijuana usage, the songs "sounded like hits" to him.
Matador Records released an expanded two-disc edition of this album under the title Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition on November 6, 2006, which featured extensive liner notes, outtakes and B-sides.

Recording

The songs "Grounded," "Flux = Rad," "Pueblo," and "Kennel District" were originally written at the same time as the songs that became Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and rough versions appear on disc 2.
The album was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, with the exception of some tracks recorded at Random Falls, a recording studio in New York.

Title and cover art

Title

The album's title is an homage to former drummer Gary Young, who would frequently yell "Wowee zowee!" when excited. The phrase also notably dates to Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention's 1966 album Freak Out!, which also displayed the album title in a cartoon speech balloon and featured a track titled "Wowie Zowie".
Dick-Sucking Fool at Pussy-Licking School was briefly considered as a potential album title, but discarded after being considered too risque by the rest of the band. Nevertheless, the phrase is included in the album's booklet art. The would-be title was a nod to the Rolling Stones' Cocksucker Blues.

Artwork

The cover art was painted by New York-based artist Steve Keene. The painting is a copy of a photograph originally found in Life magazines 1972 World Library title The Arab World, which depicted two sitting women, dressed in dark robes. To their right stands a dark colored goat with curled horns. Omitted from Keene's copy of the photograph is a girl in a tan dress holding a baby, stationed between the two sitting women. The caption below the original photo reads, "A midday rest is enjoyed by three Arab women and a goat on an arbor-shaded porch. Fellahin women often wear black robes over their other clothing."
Malkmus picked the artwork from a stack of 50 or more works that Keene produced during a live painting session at one of his exhibitions. Malkmus chose the piece due to its resemblance to the front cover of Guru Guru's 1972 album Känguru, a cover that he had always admired.

Reception

Wowee Zowee was released to middling reviews from critics. Rolling Stones Mark Kemp found the album "scattered and sloppy" and felt that Pavement had "turned in a handful of half-baked performances". Los Angeles Times critic Lorraine Ali likewise criticized it as "a sloppy effort, even in Pavement terms. It comes off lazy and unfinished, never attempting to reach out or connect as previous albums did". Kevin McKeough of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the album "teeters between material that solidly focuses the band's strengths and mannered, indie-rock indulgences". Spin writer Eric Weisbard reacted with muted praise, noting its "impressively distinct range of sounds and moods" while nonetheless stating that only certain tracks ranked "with Pavement's hallowed best". Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian was especially critical, quipping that it "probably helps to be a 15-year-old boy to appreciate Pavement" and that the band does not "release albums so much as in-jokes and their fourth continues the tradition." Sullivan concluded that Malkmus' "monotone occasionally gives way to a pained little yips" and Spiral Stairs "sometimes hits on a lifting melody, but mostly he sounds as confused as his colleagues."
Among more positive reviews, Selects Roy Wilkinson remarked that "there's plenty of Pavement's lazy elegance, particularly when the elegiac sweeps of 'We Dance' recall Hunky Dory". In his glowing assessment of the album, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote: "It's rarely hard or fast or chaotic, and if it was their sacred mission to humanize guitar noise, they've betrayed it like the reprobates they no doubt are. But if their vocation is beguiling song-music that doesn't sound like anything else or create its own rut, this reinforces one's gut feeling that they can do it forever."

Legacy

In the years following its release, Wowee Zowee has been reappraised in highly positive terms. According to Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield, the album had come to be widely viewed as a "masterpiece", and even, among many "diehard" Pavement fans, the band's best album. In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that repeated listening reveals the album to be "a dense collage of '90s rock & roll that recasts the past and present into one rich, kaleidoscopic, and blissfully cryptic world view".
In 2002, Rolling Stone voted Wowee Zowee the 12th Coolest Album of all time.
In 2010, author Bryan Charles wrote a book about the album as part of the 33⅓ book series, in which he interviews all members of Pavement, as well as Matador Records founders Gerard Cosloy and Chris Lombardi.
The indie rock band Boat parodied the album's cover art, among several others, on its 2011 release Dress Like Your Idols.
Jason Lytle included Pavement's "Motion Suggests" when he compiled Artist's Choice—Below the Radio, a various artists collection. That song's actual title, "Motion Suggests Itself", was incorrectly listed on Wowee Zowee due to a transcription error and was not corrected until the expanded reissue eleven years later.
As of 2010, the original version of Wowee Zowee had sold 129,000 copies, and the reissue had sold 32,000 copies. These numbers are a notable drop-off from their previous release, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, which sold 246,000 of the original and 75,000 of the reissue.

Track listing

All songs written by Stephen Malkmus, otherwise noted.
  1. "We Dance" – 3:01
  2. "Rattled by the Rush" – 4:16
  3. "Black Out" – 2:10
  4. "Brinx Job" – 1:31
  5. "Grounded" – 4:14
  6. "Serpentine Pad" – 1:16
  7. "Motion Suggests" – 3:15
  8. "Father to a Sister of Thought" – 3:30
  9. "Extradition" – 2:12
  10. "Best Friend's Arm" – 2:19
  11. "Grave Architecture" – 4:16
  12. "AT&T" – 3:32
  13. "Flux = Rad" – 1:45
  14. "Fight This Generation" – 4:22
  15. "Kennel District" – 2:59
  16. "Pueblo" – 3:25
  17. "Half a Canyon" – 6:10
  18. "Western Homes" – 1:49

    Personnel

Adapted from the album liner notes.
Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition is a two-CD compilation album by Pavement released on November 7, 2006. It contains Wowee Zowee in its entirety, as well as 32 of the band's other songs from that era, 18 of which were previously unreleased.
Matador Records offered extra items to people who pre-ordered the reissue. Those who chose to pre-order the album received a code redeemable on the Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition website for a rare recording of a live Pavement show at the Palace in Los Angeles on April 21, 1994. Also included in the pre-order deal was a free 7" record which included previously unreleased studio versions of the songs "Black Out" and "Extradition" and a poster based on a painting that artist Steve Keene originally contributed for the original release of Wowee Zowee in 1995.
The track "Motion Suggests Itself" was mistitled on the original release by the omission of its title's final word due to a transcription error. The Sordid Sentinels Edition finally rectified this mistake.
A different version of "Easily Fooled" appeared on as "The Sutcliffe Catering Song". Also, an early version of "Brink of the Clouds" with an intro and outro appeared on the same album.

Disc one

Wowee Zowee
  1. "We Dance"
  2. "Rattled by the Rush"
  3. "Black Out"
  4. "Brinx Job"
  5. "Grounded"
  6. "Serpentine Pad"
  7. "Motion Suggests Itself"
  8. "Father to a Sister of Thought"
  9. "Extradition"
  10. "Best Friend's Arm"
  11. "Grave Architecture"
  12. "AT&T"
  13. "Flux = Rad"
  14. "Fight This Generation"
  15. "Kennel District"
  16. "Pueblo"
  17. "Half a Canyon"
  18. "Western Homes"
Wowee Zowee session outtake
  2. "Sordid"
Rattled by la Rush EP
  2. "Brink of the Clouds"
  3. "False Skorpion"
  4. "Easily Fooled"
"Father to a Sister of Thought" single
  2. "Kris Kraft"
  3. "Mussle Rock "
Pacific Trim EP
  2. "Give It a Day"
  3. "Gangsters & Pranksters"
  4. "Saganaw"
  5. "I Love Perth"
Wowee Zowee session outtake
  2. "Sentinel"

    3. Disc two

I Shot Andy Warhol soundtrack
Wowee Zowee session outtake
Recorded March 3, 1994 at Hilversum, Netherlands
Wowee Zowee session with Doug Easley on piano
Homage to Descendents tribute album
Steve Lamacq Evening Session
Medusa Cyclone/Pavement split 7"
Recorded live at Wireless JJJ Radio in Australia
Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks compilation
 soundtrack
Wowee Zowee session outtake