Pavement wrapped up at Easley Recording in Memphis. They mixed the tracks and recorded overdubs in New York. They took a step back and assessed the material. It was a wild scene. They had fully fleshed-out songs and whispers and rumors of half-formed ones. They had songs that followed a hard-to-gauge internal logic. They had punk tunes and country tunes and sad tunes and funny ones. They had fuzzy pop and angular new wave. They had raunchy guitar solos and stoner blues. They had pristine jangle and pedal steel. The final track list ran to eighteen songs and filled three sides of vinyl.

Released in 1995, on the heels of two instant classics, Wowee Zowee confounded Pavement's audience. Yet the record has grown in stature and many diehard fans now consider it Pavement's best. Weaving personal history and reporting—including extensive new interviews with the band—Bryan Charles goes searching for the story behind the record and finds a piece of art as elusive, anarchic and transportive now as it was then.

Pitchfork

“Pavement’s third album isn’t the most obvious choice for a 33 1/3 book. Predecessors Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain are considered to be the band’s best albums, and some fans (OK, me) would even pick Brighten the Corners as a close third. But the series is more concerned with telling new stories than in re-telling old ones, and Bryan Charles relishes the opportunity to argue for a personal favorite. Wowee Zowee may have been a flop (he even admits a “lack of excitement” when he first heard it), but he shows how the album has gradually revealed a new cohesiveness governing its scattershot aesthetic over the last two decades and how it is now revered by the same listeners who initially shrugged their shoulders.”

Stephen M. Deusner, The Best 33 1/3 Books

Portland Mercury

“[Charles] has turned in one of the best pieces of rock journalism in recent memory—a no-bullshit, heartfelt manifesto of fandom.”

Crawdaddy!

“This is a book for Pavement geeks written by a Pavement geek, and as a Pavement geek, I mean that as a compliment. In it, Charles not only personalizes his love of the album, but also tags, if offhandedly, the book as a labor of love. He knows his audience, and he gives of himself to that audience, in case they’d care to hear him out. He’d be pleased to know that some of us do.”

Pomo Jukebox

“Wowee Zowee is a perfect example of why the 33 1/3 series is so successful and has had such long legs—with every volume there is the chance at greatness . . . Charles’s sharp writing, self-referential framework, and measured earnestness make his book one of the series’ biggest successes, and a great piece of rock journalism.”

Tiny Mixtapes

“Part history lesson, part fanzine love letter, Bryan Charles has written a book that is as ambitious and yet as untethered as his subject matter.”