or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Hold on, this is where it gets a little weird.

The year 1994 found Pavement on the brink of full-fledged rock and roll success, following the release of their strongest album yet (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain), and their MTV-supported single “Cut Your Hair.” The major labels courted them with renewed fervor, and the band even appeared at a couple radio-funded rock showcases, all to their apparent dismay. Faced with the pressure of delivering an equally lucrative follow-up, Stephen Malkmus and co. instead opted to shove a stick into the spokes of stardom’s wheel. The result was 1995’s Wowee Zowee. Recorded over two weeks in Nashville, the album is like few others in existence. At times raw and manic, at others beautiful and focused, the one thing that it never is, is predictable.

While Malkmus’ lyrics had always been, for lack of a better word, obscure, they took a definite wayward turn on Pavement’s third album. On earlier releases, his trademark lyrical bent seemed to be controlled, and formulated to an extent, whereas on Wowee Zowee, the words seem to spill forth from his mouth, weaving barbed-wire tapestries within the listener’s mind. What’s more, the album continued Pavement’s ongoing struggle to be respected as actual musicians, rather than dissonant indie spokesmen with a horde of distortion boxes. It is here that they finally succeeded. Throughout the course of its fifty-six minutes, the album calls to mind Big Star, Swell Maps, The Fall, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Clash, Television, Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, The Byrds, The Pixies, Galaxie 500, Neil Young, and The Residents, amongst countless others, proving Pavement to be both consummate listeners and creators.

It is said that the band paid absolutely no attention to the album’s sequencing, and that’s probably true. But at the same time, it seems as though it would be impossible to form a cohesive body out of Wowee Zowee’s 18 tracks. The record opens with the Scottish-influenced chant, “We Dance” (in which Malkmus intones “I don’t have a clue anymore”-- one of the album’s many references to uncertainty), which is not only the band’s first foray into the acoustic guitar, but into hi-fi recording as well. The gears shift into the harmonica-tinged barnburner “Rattled By The Rush”, a song that carries on Crooked Rain’s classic rock influence. Just as soon as the mood shifted between the first two tracks, it does again into the gorgeous albeit brief ditty “Black Out”, which is followed by the bizarre, wah-wah drenched “Brinx Job”. You get the idea.

Ironically, it is on Wowee Zowee that Malkmus pens some of his most focused, jarring work. A prime example is “Grounded”, the story of a doctor whose immense wealth and prized collection of vintage cars cannot ease his mind of the images of death and sadness that infuse his profession. As if the lyrics are not powerful enough, they are complimented by a shimmering backdrop of slowly arpeggiating guitars, and a swaying bass line (courtesy of the exceptional Mark Ibold). Similar lyrical and musical excursions can be found on the bucolic “Motion Suggests”, and majestic “Father To A Sister Of Thought” (which features a stunning steel-pedal guitar). “AT&T”, with its “Whatever, whenever / I feel fine / I’m gonna walk away from all this” chorus shows Malkmus’ ever apparent vulnerable side. But it’s on “Pueblo” that Pavement The Musicians truly shine. Opening with remarkably iridescent guitar interplay, the song traverses a number of musical peaks and valleys before coming to a exponentially fulfilling climax. For anyone to call Wowee Zowee a toss-off record is almost inconceivable.

That’s not to say that it is without a lighthearted side. “Flux=Rad” and “Serpentine Pad” are head-on blasts of thorny punk that benefit from Malkmus’ piercing sneer, while “Fight This Generation” sees him constructing the perfect anti-anthem, a hilarious jab at the angst-by-numbers tunes that were emblazoned across MTV screens at the time. “Best Friend’s Arm” was arguably the band’s strangest concoction thus far.

With such a varied output, it would be mighty difficult to produce a flawless album, and Wowee Zowee is no exception. After a refreshingly bluesy first third, “Half A Canyon” stretches on to a sonically grueling six minutes, with no real goal in mind, something that, for once, doesn’t work for the band (although Malkmus’ hoarse wail of “oh....my....god.....I can’t believe I’m still going!” is an absurd highlight.) Scott Kannberg’s “Western Homes”, his second contribution to the record after his career (and album) highlight “Kennel District”, closes the record on a relatively sour, befuddled note.

Wowee Zowee marked the beginning of what may be Pavement’s most fruitful period, as evidenced by irreverent and brilliantly creative b-sides like “Easily Fooled” and “False Skorpion”, and more or less shut the book on any major label deals that were brewing. At the same time, all hopes of graduating beyond MTV’s 120 Minutes, or college radio were fleeting in front of Pavement’s very eyes. And they just sat back and laughed.