Wavves – King of the Beach

The world of Wavves is like a punk colouring in book, but the lines are all blurred, the pictures are of stoners at the beach partying round a campfire of angst and the crayons are acid soaked.
Born out of not knowing how to properly operate an 80s tascam tape recorder, Wavves shot to fame on the blogosphere for their deliciously shambolic no-fi stream of conciseness noise. Now that they’re studio recorded and the skuzzy tones are intentional rather than a happy mistake, Nathan Williams hasn’t got the distortion to hide behind anymore so he’s going to have a good winge instead. The lyrics are a psychologists dream, pre-empting any criticism by getting there first themselves.
When KOTB is good, its ridiculously good, like the drawling glorious hand clapping King of the Beach. But when its bad, it dissapears up its own arse and into Blink 182-esque cringeville, like Super Soaker where he chants “stuuuuuupid” for what feels like 14 years (his mental age?) There’s paranoia, self deprecation, hatred and spite all rolled up in a charmingly messy ball (“My own freinds hate my guts/ ah so what who gives a fuck?” – Green Eyes.)
The moments when this album shines are when they channel the surfy nonchalance of class acts like Best Coast and the patchwork genre hopping of Of Montreal. After a while, its clear that the distortion also plays a crucial part in countering the sunny sweet tinges of Beach Boys and injected some much needed melody and flavour (good work, Modest Mouse producer Dennis Herring.)
Its a promising album that ultimately shoots itself in the foot by going on about how crap it is. He’d better think of a new angle for the next record, as if these glimmers of genius continue, this ceases to apply.