Wavves
King Of The Beach
(Pod/Inertia)
Avalanched by noise and distortion, the first two Wavves albums wielded overdriven garage-punk to summon goths, guns, demons, and other stoned beachside apparitions in Nathan Williams’ hometown of San Diego. Recorded on a laptop behind his parents’ house, the albums made the young one-slacker-band an international sensation while hastening a backlash helped along by an on-stage breakdown in Spain. The most popular qualm was that every Wavves song sounded the same and did nothing more than bury trite youthful frustration in lo-fi revivalism. Then again, it was catchy and cryptic, and for a lot of people that was enough.
Nonetheless, Williams has cleaned up his act on this third album, enlisting sturdy backing via the late Jay Reatard’s rhythm section: bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes. He’s also teamed up with Dennis Herring – producer of the last two Modest Mouse LPs – and made sure we can now hear his music, vocals, and lyrics alike. Is that a good thing? Without that lo-fi burn and the layer of obscurity it applies, we’re left with a dude whose fashionable take on surf, garage, punk, and beach-set oldies doesn’t sound so miraculous in the cold light of day. In fact, no thanks to the teen-misfit themes and nods to
Home Alone, Super Soakers, Nintendo, and other bygone pop culture, these songs feel embarrassingly weak.
Half of the problem is the self-obsessed, often self-deprecating nature of Williams’ juvenile musings. Like his girlfriend Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast, he flits between a persecution complex and more vague paranoia. But unlike her, he can’t quite make it charming.
“I still hate my music / It’s all the same,” he sneers. Elsewhere he imagines
“My own friends hate my guts” and
“I bet you laugh right behind my back". By the time we’ve endured the opening cackle, addled vocal harmonies, and inevitable kiss-off of ‘Idiot’ –
“I’d say I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t mean shit” – there’s not a whole lot of goodwill left for the rest of this needling record. Besides, everything here is numbingly familiar, from the junkyard Phil Spector-isms of ‘When Will You Come’ and ‘Baseball Cards’ to the jittery twee of ‘Convertible Balloon’ and hooky grunge of the title track.
Although there’s an Australian-only bonus track, the album’s proper last song sums up everything that’s wrong with
King Of The Beach: ‘Baby Say Goodbye’ piles on girl-group ventriloquism, cheapo effects, and endless harmonies until each becomes utterly meaningless. Williams may be able to write damn catchy songs, but here he douses them in so many overexposed artefacts of a passing trend that there’s no spark left to salvage.
Doug Wallen
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Wavves - 'King Of The Beach"