Matador Records announces a three-song shape picture disc commemorating the 25th anniversary of Pavement’s 1995 album Wowee Zowee. The special disc, cut in the shape of the speech bubble found on the cover of Wowee Zowee, features the tracks ‘Sensitive Euro Man’ and ‘Brink of the Clouds/Candylad’ that first debuted on Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels, the expanded edition that was released on CD in 2006, and will be available on vinyl for the first time via Matador Records globally.
Originally released 25 years ago on April 11, 1995, Wowee Zowee was the third studio album that seminal 90’s rock band Pavement put out on Matador Records. Their most eclectic effort saw the band disrupt traditional rock conventions of genre and style as they careen wildly from the country-tinged ‘Father to a Sister of Thought’ to the bluesy intro of ‘Extradition’ to the psychedelic wooze of ‘Brinx Job’, all strung together by Malkmus’s idiosyncratic and farcical lyricism. The record’s energy oscillates throughout its 18 tracks with ballads featuring chiming arpeggios like ‘Grounded’ and ‘AT&T’ that are routinely upended by up-tempo bursts of distortion and fuzz from the likes of ‘Serpentine Pad’, ‘Flux=Rad’ and ‘Best Friends Arm’. The overall effect is to generate a frenetic mosaic of slow-burners that persists today as the most charming and timeless collection of songs in the Pavement catalog.
Fun trivia: Belly has a border collie named Zowee after this album, true story! And she’s as cool as the album!
