Wavves - Wavvves Album Review

Review of Wavves album Wavvves released through Bella Union.

Sounding, gloriously, as though it was recorded on a temperamental 4-track, with a toilet roll tube as a microphone (and we're talking Happy Shopper, not Andrex, here), Wavvves is what we mean when we use the word 'slacker'. Music that you practically have to pull, note by note, with tweezers, through the tiny holes in the mesh that covers the speakers, because frankly, it can barely be bothered existing. This is music that sleeps in its own clothes. Music that doesn't empty its own ashtray. Ever. What am I talking about? This music doesn't use an ashtray. This is the music that uses your beer bottle for an ashtray and doesn't bat an eyelid when you drink from it.

That said, there's a gratifying energy to Wavvves. One guitar line corrals around another, ebbs and flows, the wavve effect, for sure. it's energy in the form of hydraulic action, sloshing about its own parameters. With ne'er a metronome in sight, Nathan Williams does melody as eagerly as he masters the art of atonality. Feedback feeds on feedback. Rock will eat itself, given half a chance and it's having a good old chow down on its own existence here.

Imagine, if you will, the rhythmic pummelling of Ramones, the sonic assault of Jesus and Mary Chain, song titles straight out of a glue sniffer's lobotomy leftovers ('Killr Punx, Scary Demons', 'California Goths' etc, etc) and you're halfway there. Actually, no. You're pretty much there. Welcome to Wavves-land. Empty the ashtray, will ya?

Hayley Avron