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Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

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Pavement

 
Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition
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Beloved indie band’s third album gets the reissue treatment

  • We Say...

    Review by Michaelangelo Matos

    Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus once suggested in an interview that Wowee Zowee was designed to be played on random-shuffle. That made sense — the sequencing of the band's third album was jarring, the vibe more where-do-we-go-from-here than slap-happy show-offy (as on 1992's Slanted & Enchanted) or sunshiny (1994's >Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain). All that beguiling screwiness requires repeat tackles before you penetrate its shell, which may have something to do with why Wowee Zowee is the kind of album that sounds exponentially better after you put it away for a while; after an extended absence, hearing songs that first sounded like throwaways is like running into someone you barely knew in school and winding up in conversation for an hour.

    This album came at an odd time in Pavement's career. A year earlier, Crooked Rain had made them near-stars, getting them on Jay Leno and helping secure their position on the 1995 Lollapalooza tour. Pavement seemed unnerved by the whole thing. Cue the opening words of Wowee Zowee: "There is no castration fear." Then move on to the lead track's refrain, "We'll dance/But no one will dance with us," over a melancholy, dragging piano. Title of next song: "Rattled by the Rush." But Wowee Zowee carried less stardom-as-drag subtext than that one-two would make it seem. The real theme here is the shading of Crooked Rain's summer high into autumn. The scattered punky throwaways sound beefier, lived in, like fond recollections of a not-really-retrievable past; a few songs ("Extradition," "Father to a Sister of Thought") skirt close to alt-country. But for all the willful variety here, both of this album’s two best songs are sad: "Grounded," which strings a piercing guitar motif across an unexpectedly wrenching refrain ("Boys are dying on these streets"), and guitarist/singer Scott Kannberg's greatest-ever song, "Kennel District," which laments a missed opportunity: "Can't believe she's married to him... Why didn't I ask? Why didn't I?"

    Wowee Zowee has long been the favorite album by many Pavement die-hards, so it’s appropriate that the Sordid Sentinels Edition is stuffed with cult bait. The goodies are the 1996 Pacific Trim EP, especially the seesawing "Gangsters & Pranksters," the funniest 90 seconds of Malkmus's career; the live-and-loose Australian show from July 7, 1994, broadcast on Wireless JJJ Radio; and "No More Kings," one of the few artifacts from the distinctly '90s craze of the tribute album (in this case, to Schoolhouse Rock) worth bothering with.

    Finally: Still have trouble getting into the album’s original 18 songs? Here's a trick: program them in alphabetical order. Not only does "AT&T" lead off with a giddy-up (as opposed to "We Dance"'s stumble), the three that follow — "Best Friend's Arm," "Black Out" and "Brinx Job" — create the most exuberant Pavement album-opening sequence ever. Call it A-to-Zowee; it moves with an uncanny logic. Even if you love the album the way it is, it's a revelatory listen.

  • They Say...

    Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

    Unlike the double-disc reissues of Slanted & Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the expanded re-release of Wowee Zowee -- subtitled the Sordid Sentinels Edition -- appeared a year after the album's tenth anniversary, but since this re-release maintains the standard of excellence set by the previous reissues, it seems a little churlish to complain about a year's wait. Likewise, it seems a bit ungrateful to complain that there's not as much rare or unheard music here as there was on either S&E or CR, CR, because the very nature of the sprawling Wowee Zowee meant there wasn't much left in the vaults; it was structured like a classic, messy double-album, spilling over with ideas and masterpieces jutting up against irresistible throwaways that would usually be tucked away as B-sides. As such, there aren't many unheard songs here: two instrumental fragments, "Sordid" and "Sentinel," the former lasting 28 seconds and the latter clocking in at half that; the shambling, rambling "Stray Fire," as compressed and thin as a demo, that flows from laconic country-rock to a steady groove not dissimilar to the second half of "Fight This Generation"; and "Soul Food," an enjoyable goof accurately billed as a "jam session" in the liner notes and not much more than that. This lack of new tunes -- and what new tunes that are here are relatively slight -- may come as a disappointment to some fans, but by any other measure, this Sordid Sentinels Edition is a stellar expansion of the original album. The non-LP material Pavement put out in the year following the spring 1995 release of Wowee Zowee was on par with the album. There are the B-sides for "Rattled by the Rush" and "Father to a Sister of a Thought," highlighted by the manic "False Skorpion," the moody "Brink of the Clouds," "Kris Kraft" with its overly complicated riff, and the wonderful country-rock "Easily Fooled," a song so good it appears here three times, once in its studio incarnation, once in a BBC Session for Steve Lamacq in March 1995, and once for an Australian radio performance from the summer of 1994. Those two radio shows make up for the bulk of the second disc, and there is some wonderful material here, too, including a medley of "Golden Boys/Serpentine Pad" for Lamacq and a version of "Box Elder" that opens with a ZZ Top-styled boogie then crashes into steady rolling version of one of the band's standards. There's also the Pacific Trim EP, with its priceless "Give It a Day" -- as lovely a song as Pavement ever cut -- and "Gangsters & Pranksters," a joke that retains its punch after a decade. Their contributions to the I Shot Andy Warhol soundtrack (the slow-churning "Sensitive Euro Man") and Brain Candy soundtrack (the bright, incandescent "Painted Soldiers") are here, as is "It's a Hectic World," their contribution to the Homage: Lots of Bands Doing Descendents' Songs tribute album, and "No More Kings," their contribution to the Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks tribute album which sounds as if it should have been included on the second half of Wowee Zowee itself. Finally, there's a previously unreleased alternate mix of "We Dance" and "Dancing with the Elders," an acoustic version of "We Dance" with a rocking coda that was originally released as Pavement's half of a split single with Medusa Cyclone. By any measure, this is a generous reissue: not only is it a lengthy 50 tracks, but the music is all good. For those who already have the singles and tribute albums, perhaps even the bootlegs, this is a handy way to round up the rarities, and for those that have never heard this stray slack, they're in for a treat: this is Pavement in its prime.

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