Wavves - Wavvves [Album]

Fat Possum Records

There’s a lot of shit being shat on internet forums and blogs regarding the current crop of lower-than-Guided By Voices-fi/no-wave bands garnering much attention right now; bands such as Times New Viking, No Age, Vivian Girls and Blank Dogs are certainly dividing opinions in the ‘indie’ world right now (if nothing else they also give some tenor back to that term). Dividing more than anyone else is 22 year old Nathan Williams, better known as Wavves. Late last year he released his self titled debut album (Thought this one was self-titled? - look again, this one has an extra v), and just a few months later released this follow up in the US. Not bad for someone who sings about being lazy (although he also sings about being bored so perhaps the former is not as much of an issue as the latter).

The problem that both Wavves’ detractors and some of their aficionados share is that they’re perhaps taking it all a little too seriously and not seeing it for what it is. It won’t last forever, it won’t change the world and it was never meant to. These songs were written in a bedroom, with little intent for them to seep beyond those four walls. Nathan Williams is certainly not the first young man to do that (I still have the tapes to prove it), he’s just lucky enough to be doing it in the current musical climate, where bands go from zero to hero long before they’ve had time to even scratch the varnish of their Tele, let alone wear it off.

So judging Wavvves for exactly what it is, it’s mostly brilliant. The recordings are (s)crappier than even the most lo-fi of Wavves’ contemporaries, crucially though they just also happen to be recordings of better songs than their contemporaries possess. Well most of them are anyway. Anyone releasing two albums in the space of four months is always going to have a hard time avoiding ‘filler’ tracks, and Wavvves has a few (ironically “To the Dregs” is not one of them). Thankfully at under two minutes each, two of them are not really anything more than bridges to the next track proper, with both “Rainbow Everywhere” and “Killer Punx,Scary Demons” sounding more like Animal Collective sound-checks than songs in their own right. Not that any of the tracks on Wavvves are of any great length. Most of them are so short, they could do with the kind of spam most of us guys feel paranoid for constantly receiving, with only five of the fourteen tracks lasting past three minutes. The longest of these, “Beach Goth” which still clocks in at under four minutes, is the album’s most needlessly extravagant moment.

Bored meanderings aside, the rest of Wavvves is distortion-drenched pop that makes you forgive Williams’ less sunny moments. “Beach Demon”, “To the Dregs”, “So Bored” and “No Hope Kids” are the highest points of all, each a perfect little slacker anthem, perfect for sound-tracking a misspent youth. Of course there will still be those who consider the whole album to be a soundtrack of misspent money, and that’s fair enough. Wavvves certainly won’t be for everyone, but then its creator never intended for it to be. This is not U2, this is not The Killers – Williams is a world away from such ‘we’re-bigger-than-The Beatles/Jesus/Wallmart’ b(r)ands. He’s just a kid who wrote some songs that the world got hold of sooner than some people can handle. Judging by the reports of an on-and-off-stage near-breakdown coming out of last weekend’s Primavera Festival, perhaps it was too soon for Williams himself to handle. Perhaps he just needs to go home, shut that bedroom door and write Wavvvves just for himself; he’s already given the world plenty to savour for now.

Track List:
1. Rainbow Everywhere
2. Beach Demon
3. To The Dregs
4. Sun Opens My Eyes
5. Gun In The Sun
6. So Bored
7. Goth Girls
8. No Hope Kids
9. Weed Demon
10. California Goths
11. Summer Goth
12. Beach Goth
13. Killr Punx, Scary Demons
14. Surf Goths