REVIEW : Pavement, Wowee Zowee (Matador)
- Martin Bate
Wowee Zowee follows on from last years Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Pavement's highly acclaimed, skewed take on classic rock. Early reports suggested that this new album was Pavement shying away from this direction and looking back to the more difficult art-rock structure of their earlier works. However, stylistically, Wowee Zowee is a bit of everything that's gone before.
For those reeled in by "Cut Your Hair", "Range Life", et. al. there's plenty to get lost in on the 18 tracks. Indeed, for the first half, Pavement seem to have produced the logical progression to Crooked Rain, with a step further towards beautiful lackadaisical melodies and gentle, conventional song structures. Only "Brinx Job"s falsetto, looping cartoonish yelp of "We got the money!" and the Sonic Youth style punk squall of "Serpentine Pad" (a dig at Rancid according to singer/songwriter Steve Malkmus) hint at what is to come later. The rest is stark, simple beauty, :- the opening Hunky Dory-era David Bowie delicate sentimentality of "We Dance"; the gentle sad stroll of "Grounded" which drifts around the kind of heart-tugging riff that Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis writes too rarely these days; the sidewalk strum of "Father to a Sister of Thought" which features pedal-steel to make American Music Club green; and especially the glorious sly rock'n'roll of "Rattled By the Rush" which effectively makes a mockery of Malkmus' claims that there's no "Cut your Hair" on here. This is perfect pop and should-have-been/will-be a hit.
But then the second half blows it.
"Extradition" comes in at the half way mark sounding like three attempts before they get it right. "Best Friends Arm" is just as wilfully screwed, a bouncy melody masked by atonal fuzz and jabbered vocals. "AT & T" can't resist spoiling itself with Malkmus gibbering the chorus like he's forgotten the words. All this spoiling treatment would almost be excusable if there was a great song to speak of (see the mighty Slanted and Enchanted debut for evidence) but one suspects that all the mucking about is here to detract from some uninspired songwriting as "Fight this Generation" and "Kennel District" sound like they were written on Pavement auto-pilot and the six-minute "Half a Canyon" is just plain boring.
Of the second half, only the bitter In Utero style sneer of "Flux=Rad", the cocktail-cool verse and Slanted and Enchanted chorus of "Grave Architecture" and the closing outer-space pop of "Western Homes" are worthy of your undivided attention.
Malkmus' lyrics throughout are the usual stream of consciousness stuff which aren't as impenetrable as some would have you believe; his relaxed, drawling delivery and occasional snatches of crystal clear imagery importing everything with a great feeling of depth and emotion.
Ultimately, it's an album that every Pavement fan should have. When great (almost all of the first half), then Malkmus' song-writing soars easily past the heights of the already classic Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. But when it's bad (most of the second half) then it approaches the depths of the wilfully difficult non-songs of the pre-Slanted and Enchanted singles collection Westing (by Musket & Sextant) that you were probably all disappointed by.
Its a big, confusing album which too often sees Pavement slipping from being under-achieving geniuses to just simply being under-achievers, but hey, I still love them and forgive them and so should you.
