King of the Beach
The album cover of King of the Beach pretty much says it all – the boys behind California lo-fi rock band Wavves don’t give a shit what you think. They have a fucking cat smoking a joint on it and it’s fucking rad. To which my response is, yes it is pretty fucking awesome, pass the joint please.
It’s a shame that front man Nathan Williams’ immature and horrifyingly honest personality has deterred so many from actually paying attention to the array of catchy riffs hidden in his music. On King of the Beach, the band’s third release, Williams strips away the heavy guitar reverb that his last record Wavvves was drowning in and believe it or not, actually matures.
By no means is this a revelatory turn for Williams. Songs like single “Post Acid” and the title track are still brimming with the messy high-school punk aesthetic they’ve always been known for, but filling in the reverb void is stronger songwriting in some songs, more focus on Williams’ voice and even a slight electronic/synth component on the sunshine and bounce of “Baseball Cards”. There’s less cryptic layers of noise masking Williams’ vocals so we can finally hear how he sounds and to our surprise, it’s fairly reminiscent of Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong, in a very good way. Just to show that when left with no wall of fuzz between the listener and Williams, there’s still a substantially great musician on record.
King of the Beach isn’t entirely without its faults. The latter half suffers from the aforementioned stripped-down motif. “Baseball Cards” and “Convertible Balloon”, fails to resonate musically with the listener, sounding cartoony and a little too off-kilter. “Green Eyes” is one of the album’s best tracks though with its toned down maturity (“I’m a fool/I tried running away/I’m just not fast enough,” Williams sings) and refined production truly shining through.
In the midst of this summer’s beachy surf-rock trend, Wavves truly does prevail as king of the beach. So suck it up and deal with it.
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/wavves
Stream the album now: http://fatpossum.com/promo_pages/wavves
