Review Summary: Wavves have about as much musical integrity as Never Shout Never.
Wavves' ep entitled Life Sux is a strange one. Not so strange musically, but strange in that this ep doesn't seem to represent any sort of turning point in the band's career. It's stagnant artistically, akin to that of King of the Beach, the San Diego natives' previous outing. Nathan Williams sings songs about doing nothing, other people not doing anything, being annoyed at others for taking up his time, meeting rockstars whom are better than he and destroying things. This maybe fun at first, but it gets old. Real old. It's hard to say if he's trying to get this mindless indie rock out of his system to move on to better indie things or if this is an idea of what to expect for the next album. I think we all hope to dear whatever it's not the latter.
The one true thing that saves Wavves from collapsing under sterile lard is the packaging he presents it in. Yes, the lo-fi qualities of the production bring about an audio substance that is lacking in today's mainstream music but the intestines of the mini album seems to have more relation to lack luster pop than it does true musical artistry. It is unfortunate because the hooks of the music with the abrasiveness of the guitars can be thoroughly pleasant and Nathan Williams mid to high range punk-without-being-too-punk vocals really match up to create a definitive sound. The drums are far too compressed, however. The set pieces blend together to make it impossible to distinguish drum fills and it's hard to tell apart the bass drum from the toms.
The “definitive sound” mentioned before, a mix of pop, punk and surf, isn't quite so after listening to the ep as a whole. Very quickly one uncovers that each song presented on Life Sux is the same in regards to lyrics and composition. There doesn't seem to be much effort on experimentation in Nathan Williams' song writing. Every song uses the tried and true chorus riff intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, bridge, second bridge song structure. This makes Life Sux clunky and astoundingly hard to wade through even though the run time is a meager twenty minutes.
All this makes each song seem longer and longer to the point where one gets frustrated, impatiently waiting for Life Sux to be over. The cool satanic cover even starts to lose its charm. Two songs in and it's hard to tell which was “Bug” and which was “Destroy” or if these were even two different songs at all. By the time the seminal work entitled “Nodding Off” rolls around, that's pretty much what the listener is doing. The only real thing that separates “Destroy” and “Nodding Off” from the other tracks are featured artists. “Destroy” features the band ***ed Up, which is decent though its really nothing more than a cheap attempt to try and change the sound up but fails and the truly vapid Best Coast in “Nodding Off.”
If the contents of Life Sux is all Nathan Williams can think to write about then his life really must suck Richard. Although the album is uninspired as a whole, in a mixtape, many of these songs can be enjoyed in between songs of higher quality and substance or on a party cd. Even though the package is way cooler, Wavves have about as much musical integrity as Never Shout Never.
