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Splice Today: Wavves’ King of the Beach

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Reviewed the “new” Wavves album and well, I’m still parsing this one out. It’s not a masterpiece or a big seachange for the band and it isn’t a sign of maturation or sophistication. But it’s not a poor album or a sell-out record either. It’s just as decent Wavves album that’s super fun to listen to, but full of the same tricks as his other releases–and indeed, if you want relatively clean-sounding poppy Wavves, go find those TNDRNSS demos–and way less interesting. Additionally, I was trying to reject this absurd notion suggested by Pitchfork and that New York Observer piece that this is Nathan Williams’ statement record–that he is “king of the beach”, king of the sun-baked garage rockers and chillwavers–because yo, that’s super low-stakes and well, he made a record as poppy and light as Beach Fossils or whoever. Lastly, comparing Williams to a rapper and gasp, close-reading his lyrics was something I did back when the only hype about the guy was, “Why is there hype about this guy?!”. Check out my indecisive review below.

This is a review of the new Wavves album, but it’s also review of Wavves the person/dude/persona too, because, how couldn’t it be? Wavves mastermind Nathan Williams spent the time between last year’s noisy, sad-sack, surf punk opus Wavvves, and King of the Beach, his new, relatively clean-sounding, self-loathing, pop punk opus, overloading his music with context…

Written by Brandon

July 8th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

Posted in Splice Today, Wavves

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4 Responses to 'Splice Today: Wavves’ King of the Beach'

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  1. Wait! You were writing about Wavves “back” in June 2009? I had no idea! That’s some serious credentials! Finally I can really feel the brilliance and authority radiating off your writing!

    HarryLime

    8 Jul 10 at 11:58 pm

  2. lolz. Missed the part where I said I was brilliant? My point is more, the shit people are saying about the new album has been true since day one and well, I made these points back when it wasn’t as page-view worthy to write about Wavves.

    Brandon

    9 Jul 10 at 2:18 am

  3. Had no idea anyone was diggin’ the Wavves back then either. I see you Brandon! (FYI whenever anyone is willing to throw you a free “brilliant” smile and accept graciously) :o ) Keep up the great reporting, and yeah, the new album is almost stat quo for them, so not a disappointment.

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    realizme

    12 Jul 10 at 9:29 pm

  4. quite helpful stuff, all in all I picture this is worthy of a bookmark, cheers

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    6 Jun 12 at 7:40 am

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