Artist: Wavves
Album: Wavvves
Year: 2009
Grade: 2.5 pretzels
There’s something strange in the air over in California. Just witness Wavves, the latest indie phenom to emerge from the sunny wilds of the West Coast. Wavves is the performing name of Nathan Williams, a young Cali man who recorded this entire album on ever-reliable 4-track recorders in his bedroom. Needless to say, the recording quality is more than a few pegs below Steely Dan. However, not unlike his fellow Californians in Pavement, his work is an argument that “good” recording quality is all relative and that his flaws-and-all style of recording captures his songs the way they were meant to be heard.
Now, that’s all fine and dandy if the music sounds appealing. Unfortunately, the strangely titled Wavvves never really becomes the iconoclastic, shambling masterpiece it might want to be, on level with Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted. Williams doesn’t help his cause by melting his songs with the heaviest of guitar distortion. His abrasive wall of sound is certainly attention-grabbing, but it blunts any unique edge the songs might have, burying them all in a very similar-sounding flood of feedback. He also records his vocals through a similar set of distortions, sounding like he’s singing to you from underneath an ocean. You’re lucky if you can even understand a few words.
There might be an interesting aesthetic lurking behind all this sludge. Williams seems to have a certain obsession with goth culture, since five of his songs have the word “goth” in their title and another three feature the word “demon.” What does all this mean? Well, honestly, I haven’t got a clue. My prevailing attitude towards this record is one of mind-buckling confusion. Aside from a slight nod to accessibility with “So Bored”, Wavvves seems determined to create its identity through poorly recorded noise. It’s a challenging choice, to be sure, but it also seems incredibly lazy. Williams doesn’t take his songs to another level just by recording them “badly.” In the end, the album feels like an inside joke from a young man who needs to get out of his room some more and who's baked by more than just the Californian sun.
Now, that’s all fine and dandy if the music sounds appealing. Unfortunately, the strangely titled Wavvves never really becomes the iconoclastic, shambling masterpiece it might want to be, on level with Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted. Williams doesn’t help his cause by melting his songs with the heaviest of guitar distortion. His abrasive wall of sound is certainly attention-grabbing, but it blunts any unique edge the songs might have, burying them all in a very similar-sounding flood of feedback. He also records his vocals through a similar set of distortions, sounding like he’s singing to you from underneath an ocean. You’re lucky if you can even understand a few words.
There might be an interesting aesthetic lurking behind all this sludge. Williams seems to have a certain obsession with goth culture, since five of his songs have the word “goth” in their title and another three feature the word “demon.” What does all this mean? Well, honestly, I haven’t got a clue. My prevailing attitude towards this record is one of mind-buckling confusion. Aside from a slight nod to accessibility with “So Bored”, Wavvves seems determined to create its identity through poorly recorded noise. It’s a challenging choice, to be sure, but it also seems incredibly lazy. Williams doesn’t take his songs to another level just by recording them “badly.” In the end, the album feels like an inside joke from a young man who needs to get out of his room some more and who's baked by more than just the Californian sun.
leave my new state alone
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