Wavvves (3 v’s) is the second full-length album from Wavves (2 v’s), the pseudonym of San Diego musician Nathan Williams. This album radiates with the atmosphere of Williams’s laid-back hometown, helping to create fuzzy, relaxed beach punk reminiscent of surf bums and winding California freeways. Williams limits himself to simplicity, with only a distorted guitar, wailing vocals, and the occasional synthesizer, but Wavves’s sound is by no means dull or boring. Instead, he produces the perfect lo-fi, noise rock soundtrack for a day near a polluted beach or a smoggy skyline. One of the album’s best tracks includes the catchy, fast-paced “No Hope Kids” which exudes the apathy of a generation, complete with the starting lyrics “Got no car / got no money / I got nothin’, nothin’, nothin’, not at all.” “So Bored” contains vocals alternating between groans and wails on a rather familiar subject matter, while “Beach Goth” is an obvious beach anthem which starts out slow and continues to dissolve into a conglomeration of noise and distortion. As for influences, Williams borrows a variety of sources to create Wavvves: the album is essentially what would happen if the Ventures and the Beach Boys combined, started doing hard drugs, and became friends with bands like Times New Viking, Eat Skull, and Sic Alps. Overall this is an impressively straightforward noise punk album that is extremely interesting and definitely worth listening to along with Wavves’s debut self-titled album.
-JANE