Republished to mark the 30th birthday of Pavement's Wowee Zowee, this Quietus piece by Lesley Chow does a sterling job of helping to make sense of its messy sprawl.
"Experiments in energy and lethargy" and "singalong tunes with incomprehensible lyrics" could serve as descriptions of all of their albums, but Chow notes that in this instance in particular the band's intent seems to be "to frustrate the listener". Certainly, much as I instantly fell for specific tracks ('Rattled By The Rush', 'Grounded', 'Flux=Rad'), the scrappy, bitty quality of the record overall meant that I never warmed to it as much as the others, including the much maligned Terror Twilight. It was therefore something of a surprise when Spiral Stairs told me in an impromptu post-gig interview that he saw it as their best album.
In that respect, Chow's piece is enlightening, doing what many a good review does: shifting your perspective on an album you think you already have pegged. She presents a positive reframing of its fragmentary quality and the band's low boredom threshold/short attention span. What mattered most to them, she ventures, was "keeping the journey interesting while connecting the dots between sweet spots".
The Wowee Zowee that emerges is a playful, complex, creatively fertile record that refuses to conform to expectations, proceed in a conventionally linear fashion or wear a stylistic straitjacket - and is all the more fascinating for it.
Time for a revisit, methinks.
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