Wavves – Wavvves

San Diego’s Wavves are the latest in a recent barbarian invasion of scuzzy, lo-fi deliberate indie-pop obscurists- you know the sort: No Age, Times New Viking, Women (and represented on these shores by the wonderful Internet Forever, and the kind-of-awesome but bad-tastingly typical-cooler-than-you-arrogant-London-indie-girls PENS). Women’s recent self-titled record is the best of the bunch, though No Age have got the disposable identikit pop joy pretty much sorted, imo. Wavves, however (actually, somewhat aback-takingly, the work of just one guy called Nathan Robertson I think his name is), veer closer to Times New Viking in sound.Times New Viking being, of course, a band I should love, but just merely like, a band who are an absolute, destructive joy live but so disappointingly flat on record and its so frustrating because you know, you just know know know KNOW that it's because of the not-as-clever-as-they-think-it-is production. And whats more I can’t believe myself that I’m railing against it, I can’t believe I’m doing this because its almost as if TNV themselves have gone out to construct a band specifically to appeal to me and I’m just a beautiful desired woman caught in the middle of an awkward, over-enthusiastic fuck. “No”¦ TNV, no, your elbow”¦ its prodding into my pop”.But that’s TNV, and this is Wavves, and well”¦ what I can say about Wavves is that Wavves is probably the band TNV wish they could be, because the songs are much more complemented, as opposed to limited, by the production. This is both a good and a bad thing because what you have is essentially less good songs, but a more complementary aesthetic that brings out their best. Or does it? I dunno actually, I like this album but despite the fact its only 29 minutes long it still seems quite a bit longer.Still, songs like ‘So Bored’ and ‘No Hope Kids’ really are something. Its an inspiring movement, this new lo-fi thing that’s happening at the moment. I mean I wouldn’t contend its produced anything like an unapproachable classic by any means but it has produced a good deal of disposable pop joy, so I find myself very much ideologically nodding along. Wavvves will never be my favourite record in all the world, its not something fragile and special to be treasured, but hopefully it’s a sign that this year there’ll be more and more stuff emerging quite like it to come. Grassroots oblivion. Now a world of this really would be something I’d quite like to see. That said we might all end up with headaches. 79%Wavves on MySpace