Why is Pavement’s Wowee Zowee on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
We got the money! We got the money now!
Some stats & info about Pavement – Wowee Zowee
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Lo-Fi, Noise Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #265
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Wowee Zowee released? 1995
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #684 out of 1,000
Pavement’s Wowee Zowee on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.
What does Pavement’s Wowee Zowee mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
In the recent entry on this here best 1,000 albums ever list for Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (#688 of best 1,000 albums ever), I talked about the path I took to get Pavement to “click” for me.
Once things clicked, Wowee Zowee became my favorite overall Pavement album (by just a hair!) by way of its wild eclecticism, wit, and most of all its sweetly weird alt rock vibe.
I have no idea what “Brinx Job” is really about but I find it to be catchy, weird, and hilarious in equal parts. The repeated line of, “We got the money! We got the money now!” evokes some kind of celebration after a successful heist of an armored car… for now!
Whereas “Brinx Job” is strange and hilarious, “Father to a Sister of Thought” is strange and beautiful. And like Pavement overall for me, it gets better every time I listen to it.
“AT&T” has a little bit of a Sonic Youth vibe and a little bit of a Smashing Pumpkins vibe. And, that said, I’m certain you can look at songs from those bands and say that they have a little bit of a Pavement vibe.
“Serpentine Pad” turns the amps up and leans into the band’s harder rock and noise rock side. Typically, the noise rock part would be likeliest to turn me off (as it still does on a chunk of Sonic Youth’s catalog, as much as I’ve come to revere that band over the years), but it really works for me here.
“Best Friends Arm” is weird, loud, and fun. Which… I mean, that’s kind of great when you explain a describe a song with those three words, right?