Pavement: Wowee Zowee - Sordid Sentinals

When I ask Pavement's Bob Nastanovich if Wowee Zowee sounds different today than when it was first released in April of 1995, I expect him to agree. I expect him to say that it sounds even more alive than it did; even more brilliant and lazy and prescient. That the remaster – out on 4 Dec on Domino – is awesome, ringing, crystal clear. But instead he says that the album sounds "exactly as I remembered." And he says he hasn't heard the new version. "I should go buy one." And me, I'm so excited about this that I feel like I ought to burn him a copy of this promo, these two discs comprising fifty songs – the original 18 tracks of W/Z, then rarities, b-sides, Lamacq sessions, live cuts, and more.

The package boasts less rare material than other recent Pavement reissues, but Wowee Zowee is so singular – and the remaster so good - that frankly it doesn't matter. 'Grounded' is glitter-sinister, bright and dark; 'Pueblo' sends me fireworking skyward; 'Kennel District' is the rise of a submarine. And 'We Dance', which opens the record, shows Stephen Malkmus in full slacker-courtier mode, the guy who cares most-and-least of all about the song. "Pavement was approachable," Nastanovich says, "We didn't make it easy: we made it 'doable'."

Wowee Zowee is a strange beast. Coming off the back of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (one of the decade's biggest indie rock records), the band went for something willfully chaotic. The songs are messed-up, jubilant, frustrated. Hardcore is followed by whimsy, noise by tenderness: it's eighteen tracks of Beefheart lunching with Weezer and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

And since the band broke up in 1999, releases like this are all we've got to go on. Didn't buy the soundtrack to the Kids in the Hall movie? You're in luck: 'Painted Soldiers' is here, guitars ashine (and with an even better live BBC version). Didn't get that split 7" with Medusa Cyclone? Not to worry: 'Dancing With the Elders' is included too.

Bob Nastanovich wasn't the first of Pavement's members, nor one of the main songwriters, but he was a beloved and key member: settling disputes, drumming (alongside Gary Young, and later Steve West), and yelling. "I'm an awful singer," he admits. "Beer made me sing." But he was key to the band's splendid and scattered vibe, epitomised in Wowee Zowee. I ask him his fondest Pavement memory. His answer might as well be a song-lyric: "Our first gig in Sydney in '93. My nose bled from joy." [Sean Michaels]