If you take a look at Wavves’s song titles and lyrics, you’d think they were a moping emo band 10 years late to the party. But while their lyrics are dark and desperate, their music is anything but. In fact, they make the party. The So-Cal surf-rock band, formed originally as a solo project by frontman Nathan Williams, finds ways to make people happily sing along to lyrics like “Misery, will you comfort me?” and “We’ll all die alone, just the way we live.” With whining verses and catchy, head-banging hooks, Wavves turn their sad songs into party anthems, and they’re taking their music on tour for the first time in years to support their upcoming album, V.
“We haven’t really done a real tour in almost two years,” Alex Gates, Wavves’s guitarist, said. “We’ve been doing one-offs and college shows for the past year or so. We’ve had a lot of down time to record and get a lot done in that arena. Really just time to focus.”
Gates joined the band during the recording of their last album, Afraid of Heights, but only had a minor role in the studio. Since their first two albums, which were both credited entirely to Williams, Wavves has been including more and more songs written by other members of the band. Their third album, King of the Beach, included a few written by the rest of the band, and Afraid of Heights saw even more collaboration.
“The last record I played a little guitar. This one was more of a unit. Me, Stephen [Pope], and Nathan all, like, threw in what we had and we picked the best ones. I think compared to the last album, it’s a lot more upbeat. There were definitely more songwriters involved.”
As for their grim lyrics, Gates assured me not to read too far into them.
“I don’t really think about them too much. They’re kind of just, like, whatever comes out first. Not necessarily anything literal or from our lives or anything. Whatever sounds good.”
For punk fans, Wavves seemed to come around right when we needed them most. When their eponymous first album came out in 2008, leading punk bands like Blink-182, Green Day and Fall Out Boy had either disbanded or fallen into the spiral of searching for the elusive pop radio hit. With Wavves came a punk revival that brought with it a surf-rock twist.
“It’s definitely good, good for us (laughs). I think we’re selling out with a pretty young crew. We all liked pop punk growing up, but it’s not something we all sit around and listen to at this point. But it does come out subconsciously in our music. It’s something you listen to as a kid that you can’t quite shake from the way you write songs no matter how hard you try.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a major label punk release without some issues. In July, Williams faced off with Warner Brothers after the release of a track from the new album. Gates, albeit vaguely, elaborates:
“It was basically just an issue about art copywriting. We put the album art out and at the last minute the label said we couldn’t use the artwork, so they took the song down. It was just sort of a bummer. I guess it looked too much like another image and they didn’t tell us that beforehand so it was done last minute.”
Judging by the four released singles from V thus far, though, the rift doesn’t appear to have taken any toll. The new tracks pop with surf-rock riffs to mask classic, self-deprecating Wavves lyrics.
Wavves comes back to Madison on Monday, Sept. 21 to play at The Majestic with Twin Peaks. Their new album, V, drops Oct. 2.
