Including Madison Square Garden with Phoenix, East Coast dates in Sept.
VIDEO: Live at Sirius / XMU “Super Soaker”
MP3: “Post Acid”
Bio:
In the life of Nathan Williams, the year of 2009 will go down as both a highlight reel and a total shit show. Meteorically, feverishly and somewhat improbably, two albums worth of naïve punk rock he recorded behind his parents’ San Diego home as Wavves became a sensation in the world of indie music. As a result, passports got filled, capers got pulled off and lots of good things got said about the music in both print and digital ink, plus in actual human voices. At the same time, fights got fought, situations got hairy and people got indignant and mean.
Oh well. Fuck it. All of it.
What’s important now is that, in the beginning of 2010, Williams made King of the Beach, the new Wavves album. King of the Beach is an adventurous and ambitious record. It cuts deeper into the bleeding throat catharsis and ’60s sunshine soul that Wavves is known for. It also unexpectedly flips out with elements of primitive electronics and psychedelic studio experimentation.
“There was a conscious effort going into this that I didn’t want to make the same record again. I already made the same record twice, with the same fucking cover art,” says Williams. “It wasn’t overbearing, but I didn’t want to recreate something I’d done. I wanted to make something bigger, something stronger.”
Unlike Wavves’ previously released material, recorded in haphazard bursts on Williams’ laptop, King of the Beach was toiled over for three months at Sweet Tea Recording, a world-renown studio in Oxford, Mississippi. Sweet Tea is also the home of Dennis Herring, producer of the last two Modest Mouse albums, and the man who dismantled and re-assembled the sound on this record.
All the rumors are true: Herring is a studio perfectionist. Williams is not. “There were some definite ‘I want to wring you neck’-type moments,” Williams says of the sessions, but he also understood that, with the resources he had available to him, he’d be stupid not to make the album sound exactly how he wanted it. “When you’re not watering it down with a load of shit and reverb, it’s a lot harder to make a record, because you know every part is going to be heard perfectly. You can’t half-ass anything,” says Williams. “A lot more effort went into this than with previous Wavves records.”
Another marked difference in the making of King of the Beach was that Williams wrote and recorded two songs with bassist Stephen Pope and drummer Billy Hayes, the duo who became his touring band at the end of 2009. Pope and Hayes formerly backed recently departed garage rock force of nature Jay Reatard. Williams met the two after his infamously disastrous performance at the Primavera Sound Festival in Spain. “I think we all agree that they squeegeed me up, because I melted down.” says Williams.
Though there is a confidence in the scope of the album-from the title track’s denim on sand anthem-baiting to the tweaked pop of “Convertable Balloon” to the unabashed prettiness of “When Will You Come”-Williams’ usual lyrical themes of self-loathing are still impossible to ignore. “I think everybody feels that way sometimes. I know everybody feels that way sometimes. You’re a fucking liar if you don’t,” says Williams. “It wouldn’t make sense if I’m feeling a certain way to not write about it. There are songs about hating myself, but there are also songs about driving in a car with a balloon and playing Nintendo too.”
In the end, though, King of the Beach is not an album for the miserable. While the verses of “Take on the World” enumerate the things Williams hates (his writing, his music, his self) the chorus resolves into a simple, bold repeated phrase: “To take on the world would be something.”
The album title King of the Beach isn’t meant to be ironic or a self-deprecating joke. It’s a declaration. “Without sounding cheesy, we all wanted to make something inspiring,” says Williams. “It’s the type of thing where you have this much, but you could have more, so go get it.”
PRESS QUOTES:
“King of the Beach features a big, bratty melody, booming drums and a catchy, lo-fi guitar hook that scrapes like sandpaper. Williams has also retained a true punk-rock sense of defiance: “You’re never gonna stop me!” he howls over and over in the chorus. Just try and prove him wrong.” – Rolling Stone
“King of the Beach, the third Wavves album, which is something of a revelation for those who thought Williams only capable of willfully buried lo-fi ironic stoner pop. The guy has always written great hooks and melodies, and now you can actually hear them. The record has sentiment, self-doubt, surprisingly sunny bits, and no shortage of the brattiness that makes Wavves” – Interview
“King breaks with a M.O. that Williams likens to “all of the instruments in a wave from one place, all blended,” instead opting for “something kind of big-sounding.” From the initial strums of the album-opening title track, you can sense a tighter, more colorful approach to songwriting, which gives way to the trippier textures of “Mickey Mouse” and “Convertible Balloon”…He scoffs at the notion that these images evoke something larger, that everything about Wavves is a delicate orchestration of elements.” – TIme Out New York
“A comeback certainly seemed far away, but on King of the Beach (Fat Possum), which will be released in August and from which Mr. Williams played songs on Thursday night at the Knitting Factory, that’s exactly what he’s pulled off. Gone is the ferocious sugar-rush distortion of the last album, replaced with crisper arrangements, and, in places, lyrics that seem to acknowledge both that Mr. Williams is in touch with his flaws and that he’s still plenty impudent” – NY Times
WAVVES
Mon-Aug-02 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom *
Fri-Aug-06 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza
Sat-Aug-07 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle / Lollapalooza afterparty #
Thu-Aug-12 San Diego, CA Museum of Contemporary Art / San Diego
Fri-Aug-13 Pomona, CA The Glass House %
Sat-Aug-14 Portland, OR Berbati’s Pan +
Mon-Aug-16 Santa Barbara, CA Soho
Tue-Aug-17 Santa Cruz, CA Crepe Place
Wed-Aug-18 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop
Wed-Aug-25 Seattle, WA Neumos
Thu-Aug-26 Vancouver, BC Biltmore
Fri-Aug-27 Victoria, BC Sugar
Mon-Aug-30 Davis, CA Sol Collective
Tue-Aug-31 Visalia, CA Howie and Sons Pizza Parlor
Sat-Sep-04 Los Angeles, CA FYF Fest
Fri-Sep-10 Memphis, TN Hi-Tone
Sat-Sep-11 St. Louis, MO Billiken Club
Tue-Sep-14 Bloomington, IN Rhinos
Wed-Sep-15 Columbus, OH Skully’s
Thu-Sep-16 Buffalo, NY Mohawk Place
Fri-Sep-17 Northampton, MA Pearl Street Nightclub
Sat-Sep-18 Waltham, MA Brandeis University
Mon-Sep-20 Providence, RI Met Café
Fri-Sep-24 Kingston, NY 323 Wall Street
Sat-Sep-25 Baltimore, MD Ottobar
Mon-Sep-27 Washington, DC Rock and Roll Hotel
Tue-Sep-28 Greensboro, NC Guilford College
Wed-Sep-29 Charlotte, NC Milestone
Thu-Sep-30 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn
Fri-Oct-01 Nashville, TN Exit/In – Next Big Nashville
Sat-Oct-02 Oxford, MS Proud Larry’s
Wed-Oct-20 New York, NY Madison Square Garden $
* = w/ Smith Westerns, Total Slacker
# = w/ Harlem, Fergus and Geronimo
% = w/ Abe Vigoda, The Growlers, Crystal Antlers
+ = w/ The Cool Kids
$ = w/ Phoenix, Dirty Projectors
Wavves
King of the Beach
(Fat Possum)
Physical Street date: Aug. 3, 2010
King Of The Beach
Super Soaker
Idiot
When Will You Come?
Post Acid
Take On The World
Baseball Cards
Convertible Balloon
Green Eyes
Mickey Mouse
Linus Spacehead
Baby Say Goodbye
WAVVES LINKS:
MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/WAVVES
Label – http://www.fatpossum.com/