Wowee Zowee

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 Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins 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.

Professional ratings

Contemporary reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
Chicago Tribune	[9]
The Guardian	[10]
Los Angeles Times	[11]
Q	[12]
Rolling Stone	[13]
Select	4/5[14]
Spin	7/10[15]
The Village Voice	A[16]

Wowee Zowee was released to middling reviews from critics.[17] Rolling Stone's Mark Kemp found the album "scattered and sloppy" and felt that Pavement had "turned in a handful of half-baked performances".[13] 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".[11] 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".[9] 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".[15] 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."[10] 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."[10]

Among more positive reviews, Select's Roy Wilkinson remarked that "there's plenty of Pavement's lazy elegance, particularly when the elegiac sweeps of 'We Dance' recall Hunky Dory".[14] 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."[16]

Professional ratings

Retrospective reviews
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[18]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[19]
Spin	[20]
Uncut	[21]

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",[17] and even, among many "diehard" Pavement fans, the band's best album.[19] 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".[18]

In 2002, Rolling Stone voted Wowee Zowee the 12th Coolest Album of all time. In 2020, the publication ranked the album 265th in its updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It had not previously appeared in earlier editions of the list.

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.[22]

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 (Scott Kannberg)
16. "Pueblo" – 3:25
17. "Half a Canyon" – 6:10
18. "Western Homes" – 1:49 (Kannberg)

Adapted from the album liner notes.[1]

• Stephen Malkmus – vocals, guitar, mixing
• Bob Nastanovich – percussion, vocals
• Scott Kannberg – vocals, guitar
• Steve West – drums, percussion
• Mark Ibold – bass
• Doug Easley – pedal steel guitar ("Father to a Sister of Thought"); engineer
• Sibel Firat – cello ("Fight This Generation")
• Davis McCain – engineer
• Mark Venezia – engineer
• Bryce Goggin – mixing
• Jan BL – mixing
• Rich Costey – mixing
• Gregory Hull – mastering

Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition
Compilation album by Pavement
Released	November 7, 2006
Recorded	March 3, 1994–March 15, 1995
Genre	Indie rock
Length	156:15
Label	Matador
Pavement chronology
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins (2004) Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition (2006) Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition (2008)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Blender	[29]
Drowned in Sound	8/10[30]
The Guardian	[31]
Pitchfork	9.3/10[32]
Record Collector	[33]
The Skinny	[34]
Slant Magazine	[35]
Spin	[36]
Stylus Magazine	A+[37]
Uncut	[38]

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 Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins as "The Sutcliffe Catering Song". Also, an early version of "Brink of the Clouds" with an intro and outro appeared on the same album.