Wavves’ previous two records sounded like shit. They were heaps of distortion molded into snot-nosed surf-punk anthems about diggin’ freaky goth girls and bemoaning one’s lack of car/money/motivation. Front man Nathan Williams recorded the tracks with GarageBand, and they work only as long as you view them as earnest DIY symphonies of teenage nostalgia.
Wavves’ latest release, however, sheds the lo-fi scuzz in favor of crispy ‘n’ clean sound engineering from Modest Mouse producer Dennis Herring and a fleshed-out rhythm section from the late Jay Reatard’s backing band. The result is kind of like shaving Zach Galifianakis and realizing that the beard is what made him funny.
No longer cloaked in distortion, Wavves’ music — or at least 50 percent of it — reveals itself to be a marginally cooler, slightly less boneheaded Blink-182.
Opening track “King of the Beach” exemplifies this. It’s a standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus rocker about getting sunburned on the thigh, telling adults or whomever that “You’re never gonna stop me!” and then yelling your self-anointed nickname, “King of the Beach.” This is the rowdy, nasally punk song you’ve heard 10 times over; it makes you wonder if the band’s older canon of damaged recordings was concealing anything exciting in the first place.
But once you get past the wide-eyed, beach bum power-grunge of “Linus Spacehead,” “Super-Soaker” and “Post-Acid,” comparing Wavves to Blink-182 seems a bit unfair and cruel. Sure, Williams spits the occasional juvenile rhyme (for instance, pairing “shit” and “idiot” in the self-deprecating “Idiot”), but he’s only half right when he sings “I still hate my music / It’s all the same” in “Take on the World.” Yes, Blink-182’s music does, in fact, all sound the same, but this is where Williams departs.
The second half of the album is surprisingly innovative for someone who has made the aforementioned shit-idiot lyric. “Baseball Cards,” for instance, samples a plinking piano and two-note guitar line; Williams then glazes over everything with high-register synth chords, low-end hip-hop synth bass, and some Motown “sha-la-la’s.” The song captures the eerie placidity and chaos of shaking up a snow globe and watching a blizzard of plastic snowflakes unfurl onto the shrunken city below. Incidentally, “Baseball Cards” is about not wanting to go outside.
“Mickey Mouse,” the album’s best track, also uses a sample: “Da Doo Ron Ron,” the hit single of ’60s doo-wop girl group the Crystals. The honking brass and claps from the original song are recognizable only for the first 10 seconds; afterward, that low-end synth bass from before checks in, as do programmed claps and a chugging guitar riff. Again, the song is about not wanting to leave home, only this time, the music — something like a languid summer dance rave — implies the opposite.
Still, we should keep Williams indoors. Although we now know what it sounds like when he’s out frolicking, getting sunburned on his thigh — it sounds like Blink-182 — his music is far more compelling when he’s home alone, with nothing but samples to keep him company.