Live-blogging Wavves' King of the Beach, First Listen

Listening to King of the Beach.

Sounds like the 90s.

At least it’s produced better than the last one. Lo-fi as an aesthetic choice, today, feels inauthentic. (Boy, that’s murky territory to get into. I better scratch that argument.) At any rate the songs are placed above the sound.

I want to listen to Superchunk—no! Early Built to Spill. Not because Wavves sounds just like that or exactly redundant, but because I like those bands more.

Am I fighting myself on this? Am I being contrarian for the sake of going against popular sentiment?

I wasn’t always a 90s crank. Didn’t always have a default “it was better in my day” button. I blame my re-immersion on the Slint book, which is now more or less done so perhaps I’ll begin to come out of the 90s fog soon.

Will I like Wavves more when I come out of that fog? Probably not. Saw two things on tumblr today worth noting: The Rich Girls are Weeping’s comment— 

—wait, “When Will You Come” = Jesus and Mary Chain. Now veering into a trippy 60s vibe. Not the Beach Boys, but the also-rans who existed in the Beach Boys’ shadow, as filtered through a psyche haze. Oh, song’s over. Didn’t take it as far as I wanted it to go.

—anyway, Rich Girls’ comment: "whatever you were listening to when you were in the place Nathan Williams is now — that is what you hear."

I kinda liked the last Wavves record but I cooled on it. This album is actually better than that one. Like, way better than that one. Though I still feel cool.

The other tumblr thing, Nitsuh Abebe’s takedown of the whole argument that this is inferior to music made in the 90s because those of us who are old enough to remember the 90s expect young acts to match our matured tastes. Basically Rich Girls made the same point in a few sentences but Nitsuh’s post is worth the read, especially for entertainment value.

A little more than midway through and I’m starting to get a little bored. I can totally see a lot of people loving this record, even if I’m mostly ambivalent.

Tangent: earlier this week Shiny Grey Monotone posted an album from 94, Morsel’s Noise Floor, which I fucking loved at the time but have not heard in probably ten or twelve years. During my year-long bout of 90s re-immersion I went looking for Noise Floor on the web but couldn’t find it—neither the album nor the band were terribly well-known back then—so I was pretty stoked to find it this week. I listened to it twice yesterday and had all kinds of reactions to it, including but not limited to: a) this is not as good as I remember it being; b) this is rad; c) oh yeah, Avey Tare didn’t invent weird vocal effects; d) this sounds a little dated but I feel like in one or two years there will be a lot of bands who happen to sound a lot like this.

In other words my enjoyment of Noise Floor is basically Nitsuh’s point made real. I think there’s some value in Noise Floor but I also wouldn’t expect people coming to it cold in 2010 to regard it as a lost classic. I'll always find pleasure in it, though.

This Wavves album is still playing but I’ve kinda stopped paying attention to it. The simple chord progressions and the “oooh-oooh-oooh” choruses are starting to blend. He did that on the last record too.

Comments

[monosyllabic]

Of course I'd rather listen to Superchunk or Built to Spill than Wavves, but I think the more appropriate question is, would you rather listen to a Ben Lee or Ben Kweller album than to King of the Beach?

[Lucas]

Sorry, but a lot of the best 90s indie rock IS better than Wavves. That's just science or something.

[Morsel]

Dig it! Thanks for the Morsel mention. I'm digging up all the old archives and put 'Noise Floor' up for digital download. There's also an unreleased version of 'Super 9' (13 minutes)! More obscurities will follow.

http://morsel.bandcamp.com/album/noise-floor

Enjoy!