After spending a career laughing myself sick over Jonah Weiner’s pristine prose, I have to admit occasionally he knocks it out of the ballpark. Like his current post on Wavves in Slate.
Sure it has a terrible start: “Nathan Williams has big brown eyes, side-swept bangs, and skinny tattooed arms—he looks a bit like Justin Bieber…” You can’t help but think, what the fuck, is he hayley Williams or what? But wait. Here is Jonah’s follow up… “if Justin Bieber were the kind of kid who drank vodka from plastic bottles and wanted to beat up Justin Bieber.”
Funny guy this Jonah, and saves himself from another scathing put down and interests me enough to follow him a little further. “Encamped in a backyard shed, Williams used GarageBand software to record his fleet, fizzy odes to youthful oblivion, but they came out with a rough-and-tumble feel that one tends to associate with pre-digital recording.” OK, I coulda done without the “one” -who are you, the fucking Queen. but otherwise it goes down smooth and keeps me going.
And here is the money shot, here is the line that makes this a real good article: “he’s able to deliver pretty pop melodies while sounding as if he’s rolling his eyes at pretty pop melodies. ” Bingo. That’s it. Weiner nailed it on the head.
So peace breaks about between Slate and rock nyc… till Jonah’s next post.