Pavement released their second album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain on Valentine’s Day of 1994. Less than two months later Kurt Cobain killed himself.
I think a lot of the critical energy that would’ve gone toward the next Nirvana release landed on Pavement’s slack shoulders.
At the end of the year, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain earned #2 on the Pazz and Jop critics’ list, two spots above the Nirvana eulogy MTV Unplugged in New York, and one below Hole’s Live Through This.
Compared to the song static of Slanted and Enchanted, Crooked Rain seemed like a ploy for mainstream attention. The boys kept their distortion pedals in check which made their guitars sound like actual guitars instead of just conduits for electricity, Malkmus actually hit most of the notes he aimed for, and the band seemed intent to actually write songs instead of just riffs. Even the Dave Brubeck-ian instrumental “5-4 = Unity” (which includes actual piano!) is over two minutes long, and has at least a handful of ideas worth talking about (WTF is that squiggly sci-fi sound?
Crooked Rain had a more overt California country vibe, drawing inspiration from Gram Parsons and The Byrds as much as Royal Trux and Swell Maps. Our erstwhile noiseniks seemed to be going straight. They were making music normal people could listen to. The genial single “Cut Your Hair” even had a clever video for MTV.
But you only had to watch Pavement on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show on April 21, 1994 to understand that they might not be built for fame in the same way as, say, Stone Temple Pilots.
While singing his biggest hit in front of his biggest audience, Malkmus looks up to the rafters, opens his mouth as wide as it will go, and scats in an atonal falsetto for fifteen seconds before the band counts off and plays the song for real. At the end, when Malkmus shakes Leno’s hand, his guitar falls off his strap and clunks on the ground. Feedback. Malkmus doesn’t look like he gives a single, solitary fuck. (And he should, because that guitar is a Gibson SG, and they have necks that snap like Kit Kats.)
Another of Crooked Rain’s singles, “Gold Soundz,” was crowned number one track of the 1990s on a 2010 Pitchfork list. It has two immortal lines that can be applied to the band’s future going forward: “Is it a crisis or a boring change,” and “You can never quarantine the past.”
Where Pavement’s past two albums opened with the candy rush of “Summer Babe” and “Silence Kid,” Wowie Zowie gives us the Nick Drake-esque folk song “We Dance.” Malkmus draws over languid acoustic guitar strums: “There is no / castration fear.” Oh, uh, good.
“We Dance” is the slowest song on the album (and maybe in Malkmus’s whole oeuvre), has silly nods to Mary Poppins (“chim chim chim”) and ”Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think)” (“Check that expiration date, man….”), and an overall melancholy vibe that’s atypical for a band who supposedly didn’t care enough to feel sad.
Like contemporary critics, Wowie Zowie was the third Pavement album I heard as well. I bet they had the same reaction I did: “What the fuck is this shit?” Is it a crisis or a boring change?
The good news for fans is that it’s not a crisis. Pavement is fucking with you. The wrong-footing opener blasts into “Rattled By the Rush,” a Pavement greatest hit. Had the album opened with it instead of ”We Dance,” I’ll bet its reviews would’ve been twice as good – which would’ve bumped The Guardian’s review up to two whole stars out of five.
Not everyone loves “Rattled By the Rush.” On the Discograffiti podcast, both the host, Dave Gebroe, and Pavement percussionist Bob Nastrovitch discuss their dislike for the song and its weird rhythm.
But what do they know? When I asked my buddy Jake Danna why he liked Wowie Zowie so much, one of the four things he said was “Rattled by the Rush.” Considering Jake’s a fan of weird rhythms (see his band Curta)…figures.
Contemporary reviews of Wowie Zowie were not kind. In his two and a half out of five star review for Rolling Stone, Mark Kemp said, “The band’s refusal to play up to expectations keeps the stronger melodic ideas sounding fresh but leaves the album as a whole feeling scattered and sloppy.”
And…he’s not wrong. At least his description is not wrong. Wowie Zowie is much sloppier than Crooked Rain, but I think that’s because you can’t quarantine the past.
For Crooked Rain, Pavement put their noisier influences on the back burners. On Wowie Zowie they threw them back in the main pot. I hear Dinosaur Jr. in “Rush,” Royal Trux in “Serpentine Pad,” The Fall in “Brinx Job” and early Stereolab in “Half a Canyon” – not coincidentally, the longest song they ever released.
Nastrovitch told Gebroe that you couldn’t nail down Pavement. They took inspiration from all over. Besides, as a songwriter, Malkmus easily grew bored. Try getting a guy like that to save rock & roll from post-grunge wannabes by writing alt-county ditties.
Which is not to say that Pavement gave up on the country completely. Wowie Zowie has “Father to a Sister of Thought” and “Pueblo,” this album’s “Gold Soundz” and “Range Life.”
What all this leaves us with is a kitchen sink album. It’s eighteen songs, fifty-some minutes, three vinyl sides (the fourth was blank), and no one’s idea of perfection.
But it’s perfect in its sloppiness. It’s to Pavement’s what Exile on Main Street is to the Stones and The White Album is to the Beatles. It’s a fan favorite, a hang-out album from a band at their peak, a smorgasbord.
Since I’m a movie guy as much as a music guy, I’ll give you a corollary: Wowie Zowie is to Pavement what The Big Lebowski is to the Coen Brothers.
After the critical love fest over the Coen’s 1996 masterpiece Fargo, the brothers got the opportunity to make any movie they wanted. They decided to make a shaggy comedy about a middle-aged stoner trapped inside a confusing noir mystery. Audiences didn’t get it, critics didn’t really like it, and the movie bombed at the box office.
But people kept watching it, people fell in love with it, and eventually it became recognized as one of the Coen’s best.
Pavement fans have a similar relationship with Wowie Zowie. There’s a studied perfection to Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, No Country for Old Men, and a Serious Man. But none of those movies are as fun as Lebowski. But, that’s only, like, my opinion, man.
What’s wild is how Lebowski acts as a clearing house for the Coens. It has everything they do: immaculate dialog, random violence, exquisitely lensed shots, an anxious lead character (it’s ironic, considering), another who’s a toothless blowhard, questions about fate and the mystery of life, and dream sequences that don’t dissolve into psychedelic pap, but it’s also a little all over the place. What’s with the nihilists? And the iron lung? And Sam Elliott?
Also, at a shade under two hours, it’s one of their longest movies.
Like Lebowski, time has been kind to Wowie Zowie. In the liner notes to the expanded edition, Malkmus marvelled that some of his friends consider it their favorite Pavement album.
I won’t go that far. But I get why people feel that way.
The fact of the matter is that Wowie Zowie proved to be the last time Pavement felt like they were having fun instead of trying to be fun.
Their next two albums, Brighten the Corners and Terror Twilight have funny turns of phrase, funny arrangements, and funny guitar effects (“Carrot Rope,” anyone?) But they’re straightjacketed by their immaculate production and the sense that Pavement has become a vehicle for Malkmus’s songwriting instead of a living, breathing, drinking, pissing, jamming, rocking band.
With Brighten the Corners Pavement finally gave the public (and their record company) a worthy, clean, concise follow-up to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Fortunately, before they entered their 3.0 iteration, they gave their fans this rambling parting gift.
