June 20, 2010 – Il Motore – 8:30 PM – WAVVES + CLOUD NOTHINGS
WAVVES
Named for his fear of the ocean, Wavves, the skuzzy project of San Diego slacker Nathan Williams, is a blend of distorted no-fi and refined sunshiny melodies. Charmingly messy, most of his lyrics, while difficult to decipher, generally revolve around the subjects of weed, boredom, and the beach — when he isn’t poking jabs at the gloomy subculture of goth rock (a common theme, found in “Goth Girls”, “California Goths,” “Summer Goths,” “Surf Goths,” and “Beach Goths”). Wavves was conceived just after Williams, at age 21, quit his job as a clerk at Music Trader, while he was dividing his free time between skateboarding, writing for his hip-hop blog, /Ghost Ramp, and making music using an ’80s Tascam cassette recorder and Garage Band software. Due to his inexperience with the program, the result of one month’s worth of bedroom recording sessions was two full albums of songs: all completely mangled by overdriven inputs. Rather than scrapping the material, he embraced the in-the-red aesthetic and started promoting the songs online. Wavves was quickly embraced and touted as “the next big thing” by Internet music critics and fellow bloggers.
Many praised the immediacy and D.I.Y. nature of his work, and Williams capitalized on those aspects, continuously uploading free digital versions of his music — including two 7″ singles, a cassette, and an EP — all with simple self-drawn artwork or scanned photos for cover art. Wavves’ first LP, simply titled Wavves became available around this time as well, and it was released in a limited run by Woodsist. The more confusingly titled Wavvves (note the third “V”) followed just after, and was planned for release by De Stijl, before Williams jumped ship to Fat Possum. After the track list was revamped, the release date was pushed back a month and Wavvves was officially made available on March 17, 2009.
~ Jason Lymangrover, All Music Guide
http://www.myspace.com/wavves
http://www.fatpossum.com/artists/wavves
CLOUD NOTHINGS
No names, no photos, just a vague address. Almost from nowhere Cleveland based Cloud Nothings thundered into earshot with a tremendously weighty song titled Hey Cool Kid, a bitter(sweet) high school anti-anthem – whose groove owns quite a lot to The Roots’ The Seed – so lo-fi and snotty you might think there’s something wrong with your speakers. It’s a jam with a hell of an immediate hook, a pitch-perfect pop song hidden under layers of dirt that immediately makes you want to have a BBQ with close friends even though the first heavy storm of this autumn is already raging in front of your door. Needless to say that the usual suspects on the internet went bonkers. Now with an 8 track mini-album named Turning On ready for release in early December via California based Bridgetown Records, speculations ran high about everybody’s new favourite that managed to put you under their sonic spell with one single song only. Well, Cloud Nothings is the one-man show of 18-year-old Dylan Baldi who just recently got a band together in order to present his music live. The album itself is a very late entry into this year’s best, a juvenile whirlwind of heavily distorted 60s pop nuggets that pays homage to underground heroes like The Dirtbombs, Hüsker Dü, Deerhunter or even The Sonics. Luckily for us Dylan’s class just got cancelled and he was able to quickly answer our questions.
