Pavement Discography Review

Fillmore Jive is an epic! I love it, and I'm glad you like Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. That's the beauty about Pavement - they sorta catered to everyone. Let me know what you think of Wowee Zowee. Many of the tracks in Wowee were recorded in the Crooked Rain sessions, so you might hear some similarities.
 
great minRAB think alike :beer: Although the reissue of Wowee still eludes me *insert pic of baby clenching fist here*

I don't know about everyone else but I can see this band reforming to play 'Slanted...' in it's entirety at All Tomorrow's Parties at some point. It's just a statistical certainty.
 
I do hope so. That album is epic great. Also, I agree with molly about the extra tracks of Wowee :usehead: It's my fave pavement album so I've only bought Wowee's reissue so far, but I'll judge once I've listened to all the reissued stuRAB.
 
great stuff, do you have any plans to review westing musket or whatever it's called? Apparently it's a collection of their early stuff, I thought it was an album for years
 
Wowee Zowee [Matador; 1995]

WoweeZowee.jpg

Pavement’s most challenged, ambitious, hilarious, and worthwhile album reflects the band’s past antics while hinting at their future sound, the spawn of which are 18 eccentric tracks and the band’s absolute musical pinnacle. They will never write anything wilder and weirder than Wowee Zowee.

A number of great things happened whilst recording Wowee Zowee: Stephen Malkmus aged and decided it was time to be spontaneous, trading an immediate musical follow-up to their successful Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain with something “less bass heavy, compared to CR, CR, for the sake of variety” (Malkmus himself). The result iss one of the best guitar albums of the 90s – no kidding. Songs like “Rattled By The Rush,” “Grounded” and “AT & T” have some of the most perfect licks of the era, while grungier, punkier numbers “Serpentine Pad” and “Flux = Rad” exemplify the power of a bone crunching guitar. In between you have sombre tracks “We Dance,” “Black Out,” and “Motion Suggests Itself” – altogether you get a pretty random playlist of tracks, and a first listen could be frustrating.

Its seeming randomness is why some fans and critics discarded the album, but those fans weren’t listening closely. The song progression is, in fact, perfect for this reason: Every track carries the weight of the former and the following, building momentum. They play off each-other, making for a much more engaging listen. That’s the reason why Wowee Zowee is their best album, because it exemplifies everything that Pavement was at the time and what they would sound like afterward. It does so with some excellent pacing, plenty of eccentricity and hilarity that make for an engaging experience.

As for the outtakes and EP tracks released with the reissue, it's an interesting listen. You can see just how wrong everything could have gone if the band had not revised the song progression over and over again. It's amazing to see how disastrous Wowee Zowee could have turned out, and how volatile - and thus exciting - the album really is.

10/10​
 
That's funny, whenever I make a Pavement Greatest Hits mix (There have been several) I always start off with Silence Kit and Trigger Cut as well, perfect first and second songs. Although the omission of Kennel District is unfortunate, it's my favorite Pavement song.

CR, CR used to be my favorite but Wowee Zowee has a much longer shelf life. Im pretty sure Malkmus said once that you're supposed to play the album in random order, which I always do since I like every song anyway, and it keeps you on your toes. One of the reasons it's aged better than CR, CR, IMO.
 
I can't find it anywhere! Do you own it? Maybe you can provide a linky?



I thought of putting in Kennel District, but then it would have been too many Wowee Zowee songs. I wanted to put in Brinx Job as well. That album kills me.

The random order thing makes sense, oddly enough, but the song progression already intact is so perfect I'm almost afraid to do that : P
 
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