Perfect sound forever

The best band of the 90s? Sorry Kurt, Eddie and Thom, that honor belongs to a little band called Pavement, an unlikely group of indie-rock underdogs who made some of the best music of the last 15 years. Well-read and well-rounded, Pavement's biggest strength was combining the sweet with the jagged, being influenced equally by the pretty melodicism of early R.E.M. and the Fall as they were by the White Light/White Heat-era noise freak-outs of the Velvet Underground. \nWhile their first two albums, Slanted and Enchanted and Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain are the ones usually associated with "classic" status, the band truly peaked with 1995s Wowee Zowee, an eclectic "whatever goes" masterpiece. Songs of surreal beauty stand side by side with sublimely weird art-punk tracks, and somehow it all works out in the end.\nWowee Zowee, for all its weirdness, contains some of the best songs Pavement ever recorded. "Grounded" is a statement of stunning grandeur, a power ballad for the indie-rock generation. For "Father to a Sister of Thought" the band sounds like they got lost in Nashville, but made the best of it anyway, and "Blackout" is nearly perfect; two minutes of breezy ringing guitars, ideal for a Sunday drive. \nIf you tire of the more standard numbers (which you never will), the loud and crazy side of Wowee Zowee is there to keep you interested. Both the punkish minute-long blast of "Serpentine Pad" and the demented "Flux=Rad" are a ton of fun, and sound great blaring out a car stereo. \nFrontman/mastermind/guitarist Stephen Malkmus, as always is on top form here. His lyrics are at once silly and profound, always being too ambiguous to take themselves wholly serious. Malkmus' biggest asset though is his guitar playing. Something of a thinking man's guitar hero, his thoughtful parts and arrangements keep these songs fresh. His lack of technical grace is more than made up for by pure inspiration and naïve exploration as proved by the meandering solo at the end of "Rattled by the Rush" or the soaring climax of "Pueblo." \nWowee Zowee is one of those records that always has something new for you. Its 18 tracks are so varied that it never becomes stale. It's the sound of a band taking chances and doing whatever they wanted, and luckily taking us along for the ride.