Wowee Zowee

The sessions ran from 14 to 24 November 1994 at Easley Recording in Memphis, where Malkmus, Nastanovich and West had already worked on the Silver Jews album Starlite Walker. Days typically ran from noon to 10pm. This was the first Pavement album made with all five members in attendance, and the tracks were mixed and overdubbed at Random Falls in Manhattan from 10 to 14 February 1995. Malkmus described the approach as sprawl: do whatever you want. Kannberg, who had sequenced the earlier records, preferred a cohesive set of about ten songs. Malkmus sequenced this one alone and included eighteen, so the album fills three sides of the vinyl and side four was left blank, with an empty thought bubble on the label. He called the opening We Dance a little torch song thing.

Kannberg sang his own songs this time, among them Kennel District, which has a traditional verse-and-chorus structure. Father to a Sister of Thought uses pedal steel, played by the Memphis engineer Doug Easley. The cover is a painting by Steve Keene, worked from a photograph in a 1972 Life book, The Arab World, and chosen by Malkmus because it resembled the cover of Guru Guru's 1972 album Kanguru. The title honors Gary Young, who yelled the phrase when excited. Matador released it on 11 April 1995. It reached 18 in the UK and 25 in New Zealand, and the singles Rattled by the Rush and Father to a Sister of Thought did not sell. By June 2009 it had sold 129,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan, against 246,000 for Crooked Rain.

At the time Rolling Stone's Mark Kemp called it scattered and sloppy, while Robert Christgau defended it. It placed 17th in the 1995 Pazz & Jop poll. Rolling Stone placed it 265th on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. Reviewing the 2006 Sordid Sentinels Edition, Pitchfork's Mark Richardson called the original first side possibly the best album side the band ever managed. Kannberg considers it his least favorite Pavement record, and Nastanovich said in 1997 that it was his favorite.