-- 1 G--The Michigan Daily - Wednesday,_May 10. 1995

Pavement
Wowee Zowee
Matador
One year after the boys of Pavement
cut their hair, ironed out their wonderfully
messy, noisy guitar-driven grooves and
fashioned their most accessible and com-
mercially viable album, "Crooked Rain,
Crooked Rain," Steven Malkmus and his
Stockton, California-based bandmates re-
turn with "Wowee Zowee," their third

Matador LP,
Malkmus writes in the liner notes,
"There is no art in these songs; they drive
themselves, become exactly their limits
and possibilities," and he's exactly right.
Some of the 18 track on "Wowee Zowee"
show Pavement at their tightest; others
sound unfinished and lazily performed.
The album opens with "We Dance,"
an acoustic folk tune on which Malkmus
affects a bad British accent, singing lyr-
ics like "There is no castration fear,"
only to sound genuinely wistful singing,
"Maybe we could dance?" as the song

ends. "Rattled by the Rush," "Black
Out" and "Kennel District" approach ra-
dio-friendliness with their hook-laden
melodies and cleaner production.
"Rattled" features a thunderstorm of a
guitar duel between Malkmus and lead
guitarist Scott Kannberg, whose spiral-
ing solos also shine on "AT&T" and
"Half a Canyon."
Sprinkled in among these, some of
Pavement's most fully realized songs to
date are noisy, distortion-filled fragments
like "WestemHomes" and "Best Friend's
Arm." With "Crooked Rain," Pavement

I 11

departed from their lowest-of-the-lo-fi sta-
tus with slicker production that played up
the band's sharp melodic sense. Malkmus
and crew seem determined to remind the
listener of the band's more conosive, ex-
perimental side on the album's second half,
with "Flux = Rad," "Fight This Genera-
tion" and the slamming rant "Serpentine
Pad," on which Malkmus sneers, "I don't
need this corporate race." Strong words
coming from a band that just signed on to
this summer's Lollapalooza. But that's nei-
ther here nor there.
"Wowee Zowee" should delight
longtime Pavement fans and entice
new listeners, as it conforms to a suc-
cessful and satisfying formula:
Malkmus whines. Kannberg plays. We
dance.
- Jennifer Buckley
Ween
The Pod
Elektra
This reissue of Ween's 1991 release
is an obvious attempt to capitalize on the
relatively high profile of their newest al-
bum, "Chocolate and Cheese." But with
23 tracks that end up running more than
75 minutes. "The Pod" is not a particu-

larly accessible album.
Not that "The Pod" isn't filled with
good songs the way a piiata can be filled
with angry wasps, because it is. "Dr.
Rock" has the standard air-guitar and
drumscombined at times with vocal high
falsettos, "Demon Sweat" is a metal bal-
lad, beginning with the long quiet por-
tion, followed by louder guitar parts, and
"Mononucleosis" is Pink Floydish and
with its airy vocals.
All in all "The Pod" is done much
more in the style of various types of '70s
rock alone filtered through Ween's ma-
niacal sensibilities instead of the various
styles found on Ween's more recent al-
bums. One of the most obvious excep-
tions to this is "Strap on that jammy
pac," which has a Boredoms feel in its
repetitively rising drums and crippled
vocals. Another is "Molly," which is al-
most a mix between Devo and Prince
with its very simple beat and twisting
vocals.
But even with all these good songs,
"The Pod" is too long. Listen to a couple
songs and then change the CD. But do
listen.
- Ted Watts
SE. REcORDS. PAGE 17

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