Editing Wowee Zowee (section)

==Music and lyrics==
''Wowee Zowee'' showcases a more [[Experimental rock|experimental]] side of Pavement, returning them to the clatter and unpredictability of their early recordings after the more accessible sound of ''Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain''.<ref name="RS review"/><ref name="AllMusic review"/> [[Distortion (music)|Distortion]] and [[Audio feedback|feedback]] are often combined with mellow melodies, resulting in many songs having unusual structures and disjointed musical styles.<ref name="RS review"/><ref name="AllMusic review"/> [[Noise rock]] is prevalent on some tracks, like "Serpentine Pad" and "Best Friends Arm",<ref name="RS review"/> while "Flux = Rad" is a [[Punk rock|punk]] song that was described as reminiscent of [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]]'s "Territorial Pissings".<ref name="NME albums ranked"/> The opening track "We Dance" is a ballad that features [[acoustic guitar]]s and piano,<ref name="Anniversary 20"/> while "[[Father to a Sister of Thought]]" is a quasi-[[alternative country]] song that uses a [[pedal steel guitar]].<ref name="Online Daily"/><ref name="Paste 15 songs"/> Malkmus played a [[Gibson SG]] with [[P-90]] pickups on "Rattled by the Rush",<ref name="Bryan Charles 90"/> which also features occasional [[harmonica]] at points.<ref name="Anniversary 20"/> Due to higher production values, the album generally lacks the [[Lo-fi music|lo-fi]] aesthetic of its predecessors.<ref name="Pavement Story"/>

Most lyrics on ''Wowee Zowee'' explore humorous and cryptic themes. Although many songs give the impression that their lyrics are nonsensical, they can unpack a meaning on further inspection.<ref name="Anniversary 25"/> For example, "Grounded", which suggests that something bad might happen after a doctor leaves for a routine holiday while his unsupervised teenage daughter parties, can be interpreted as an account of middle class decadence.<ref name="Anniversary 25"/> The song "Half a Canyon" mostly focuses on an over-driven guitar sound that Malkmus had never heard before. The lyrics are meaningless and were simply added for decoration; Malkmus said that he screamed so hard towards the end of the song that he scared himself. He thought that he would have an [[aneurysm]] and decided to never scream like that again.<ref name="Malkmus in 15 songs"/> Kannberg's "Kennel District", which was described as a fuzzy [[power pop]] song,<ref name="Spin Spiral songs"/> is considered one of the album's most accessible songs because it features a traditional [[Verse–chorus form|verse-chorus-verse]] structure.<ref name="Vulture Spiral songs"/>