Review Summary: King of the Beach is like those colorful knock-off Ray Bans.
Nathan Williams is kind of an enigma. He can't sing, and he doesn't have a particularly pleasant voice either. He can't really play the guitar. And between his coke binges and weed comas I'm surprised he has time to find so much material to write about!
Wait, oh, never mind. He doesn't have anything to write about.
But, hey, that's okay! Summer isn't about introspective evaluation, or examining life choices and making deep observations about relationships and the state of mankind. It's about being, as Nathan so eloquently put it, the king of the beach. You're not going to come out of this album with any new profound vision, or a new appreciation for Wavves. This album is 36 minutes of distorted summer pop-rock. Some songs have sounds that have stuck out to me, like "Baseball Card's" distant synths, or the beat on "Green Eyes", but for the most part the instrumentals are a standard affair. Although, some tracks here are downright annoying. This includes "Convertible Balloon" which is just the same poppy keyboard and tiring guitar for 2 minutes, never changing or developing into anything more interesting. The tremolo effect on Nathan's voice, and the "waaaaaahhhh-oohhhs" on "Post-Acid" really grind on me in a bad way as well. However, most of the tracks here aren't offensive, they aren't completely boring - they're summer songs. They're loud, distorted, reverberated pop-rock anthems. They're meant to be blasted at a party, or listened to in a doorless Jeep with a surfboard on the top. It's not offensive, it's not mind-blowing. It's just fun.
The songwriting here is pretty bad. Themes touch on drug use, relationships, isolation. Yawn. This is probably the worst aspect of this record (next to Nathan's voice?) with cringe worthy lines appearing on almost every song. Oh man, where do I start?
"Ahhh, my skull just cracked/I didn't bother listening to the rest/I won't ever die/I'm a hero in my mind"
"Shinin' in the sun like a convertible balloon/Shinin' in the sun like an incredible gloom/Drivin' around with my convertible tunes/Partyin' around in my invertible cocoon"
"My, my own friends/Hate me/But I don't give a ***/Sky high/Will I fly high? Maybe/Soar high, soar right through it"
I mean, come on Nathan. Is this really the best you can give us? (Probably)
Seriously, though. It's hard to be too tough on this album. Wavves didn't make it to be anything but a simple little fun beach album. Hell, the back of the album has a sketched picture of Macaulay Culkin with whited out eyes. King of the Beach is summed up in it's own title. It's that surfer guy at the shore. He's sitting around a fire with his friends, smoking pot, and playing the guitar. Is he causing any trouble? No. Is he going to change the world? Definitely not.
But is he fun to hang around with?
Uh, maybe for a little.
