Wowee Zowee by Pavement

Wowee Zowee, Pavement's third album, came out on Matador on April 11, 1995, and it's the sound of a band turning its back on a sure thing. After the comparatively tidy Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, the Stockton, California crew went back to the racket and randomness of their early records, cutting most of this one at Easley Recording in Memphis, where some of them had already worked on the Silver Jews' Starlite Walker. Self-produced, it lurches from woozy, fuzzed-out melodies to noise blowouts and punk rushes, while Stephen Malkmus spins lyrics that are funny and cryptic in the same breath.

At almost an hour it's their longest album, spilling onto three sides of vinyl and leaving the fourth blank. Plenty of reviewers called it sloppy, and "Rattled by the Rush" and "Father to a Sister of Thought" went nowhere as singles. Time has been kinder: Rolling Stone put it in its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.