Nathan Williams – the noisy, slacker singer-songwriter known as Wavves – has just finished his soundcheck…
“Aw, it smells like shit,” he exclaims, as he wanders around The Lexington in London looking for somewhere quiet to speak on the phone. “Shit man, it’s really loud everywhere.” He’s on the final leg of a European tour with Pens before shooting over to SXSW, and then back home to sunny San Diego. I ask him what San Diego’s like? “Pretty boring.” I can’t push him to be more descriptive. Maybe it really is that dull?
Wavves is essentially a one-man project. Williams writes the songs in his bedroom then goes down to record them in his garage, though for the purposes of touring he’s enlisted friend Ryan Ulsh to play drums. On record the tracks are a barrage of Sonic Youthesque noise, behind which lurk poppy chord progressions and the same hint of a (surf) party suggested by The Soft
Pack or Vivian Girls. Live, those poppy guitars are more on the surface. “It is a lot cleaner. But the bones – the structure of the song and the sound – still all come through. I feel like somebody who liked the record would still like the live show. It’s like its step-brother or something; it’s not its identical twin.”
Our conversation takes several twists as Nathan lurches about the venue. “Yeah, pizza!” he interrupts to exclaim at one point. Pizza, shows, booze… it sounds like a slacker dream come true. “I guess yeah, I am a slacker,” he agrees. “I dropped out of high school and dropped out of college, quit my job, don’t really do anything too much besides drink and hang out with my friends and listen to records, so I guess that does kind of make me a slacker.”
He describes the inspirations behind his song-writing as follows. “I feel stupid. I feel lazy. I get drunk. I smoke weed. I have fun. I have an ex-girlfriend that I hate… Just like normal things, I don’t like to talk about anything that I don’t particularly know. I feel like that’s where people go wrong. They want to talk about all this deep shit.”
Wavves has no higher aspirations to write epic love songs or campaign to drop African national debt just yet. He’s content enough to release albums through an impeccable string of indie labels, “Bella Union, Young Turks, Woodsist, Tic Tac Totally…”. With a second album, ‘Wavvves’ (note the extra ‘v’ as the first was self-titled) just released, and another album already written and ready to go, there’s time yet to continue the dream.
Words By: Jonny Ensall
