CD OF THE WEEK: Pavement

Pavement

“Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition”

(Matador)

3 stars



In the music nerd encyclopedia, “Wowee Zowee” has two listings. The first is “a 1995 album by Pavement”; the second is “a difficult, confusing album, released with the intent of scaring away potential pop success.” Example: “The new Arcade Fire album is totally gonna be their Wowee Zowee.”

You might say that “Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition,” a two-disc expanded reissue, is the Wowee Zowee of Pavement reissues. Confusing and repetitive, this two-disc set pales in comparison to the exquisite re-releases of “Slanted & Enchanted” and “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.”

However, as a historical document, it does an admirable job of capturing the greatest rock band of the past two decades at a profoundly strange moment in their existence.

After the soaring hooks of 1994’s “Crooked Rain” and its almost-hit “Cut Your Hair,” Stephen Malkmus and company hid themselves away in the studio and emerged with an album that was equal parts depressing and incomprehensible. Although it’s only 55 minutes long, it’s a chore to get through, even today.

But somehow, in between awful junk like “Extradition” and “Flux = Rad,” the album has some of the band’s greatest triumphs. “AT&T” is one of Malkmus’ best love songs. “Half a Canyon” is terrifying in its drive. “Grounded,” a ballad about a dentist, is still chilling a decade later. “Kennel District” is the best song that second-in-command “Spiral Stairs” Scott Kannberg ever wrote. The list goes on.

That’s all well and good, of course, but you can’t praise a deluxe reissue just on the merits of the original—especially when that original is still in print. For the most part, the collection offers nothing worthwhile to Pavement collectors, but newcomers will find a small smattering of essential B-sides.

The “Pacific Trim” EP is included on Disc 1, and its lead-off track, “Give it a Day,” has always been one of the hidden gems of the Pavement catalog. “No More Kings,” a cover of a song from primary-school staple “Schoolhouse Rock!” also makes it onto the set, and somehow manages to be one of the band’s best performances. “Sensitive Euro Man,” a track from the best-left-forgotten “I Shot Andy Warhol” soundtrack, has a stunning bass dénouement.

But any self-respecting Pave-aficionado will already have all those cuts, and the First Law of “Wowee Zowee”-era B-Sides states that, for every “Give it a Day,” there’s an equal and opposite “Kris Kraft.”

Tellingly, the “new” material here includes a live version of “Kris Kraft.” We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, folks.

Where 2004’s “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA’s Desert Origins” unearthed lost masterpieces like “Same Way of Saying” and “All My Friends,” this reissue squeezes out session-outtake turds like the 15-second-long “Sentinel” and a song called “Soul Food,” which is—I’m not kidding—an improvised jam about buying some soul food.

The live tracks aren’t much better. The band ruins an early performance of “Fight This Generation” by playing two slide whistles throughout the cut. Malkmus wastes our time by tuning his guitar for nearly a minute before a mediocre rendition of “Unfair.”

And yet, upon finishing this bloated set, one can’t help the feeling that it’s revealed some deep realities about our heroes and especially about that most enigmatic of rock idols, Stephen Joseph Malkmus.

Like a resistance leader in Occupied France, Steve seemed to have realized that the only way to survive the fates of his heroes (“Monster”-era R.E.M. comes to mind) and contemporaries (Kurt Cobain’s death must have loomed large at the time) was to put his messages into code.

Where the “Crooked Rain” outtakes depicted a songwriter eager to win over the whole world with his delicate sensibilities, the “Wowee Zowee” detritus belongs to a man afraid to win in the game of music. It’s a story that’s the bands of today’s “indie” explosion would do well to study, as well as anyone else who’s willing to break out their decoder rings and sort through the album.

—Reviewer Abe J. Riesman can be reached at riesman@fas.harvard.edu.