Nathan Williams tuned his guitar, looked over at his bass player, said “I’m going to get high” and wandered off stage . 45 minutes later he was back on stage and leading a shambling, sometimes exhilarating, and certainly not particularly professional hour. “We’re not going do any encores. We’re going to sing every song we know and then we’re gonna leave the stage”.
So how were this hottest of punk surf pop bands? Not bad thought they had a coupla things going against them.
a) The drummer was drunk, a loudmouth, and a bit of a tit.
b) The cable to Nathan’s guitar was fucked, same thing happened to Total Slacker, and he had to fiddle around with his guitar for five minutes after every song and killing all possible momentum for the first half hour.
c) Worse still, the fucking drummer kept on killing the time between songs talking crap about drinking babies blood (luckily Helen was keeping me entertained with texts).
d) They were drinking all the time they were on stage and Nathan was staggering a bit by the end
although on the plus side
e) the drugs and booze didn’t put them into replacements land, let alone Johnny Thunders.
f)And, er, I liked em a whole lot.
g even if they seem to be morphing into three Pete Dohertys on a race to oblivion.
Nathan has gone on record as being an alcoholic and he absolutely had a relapse this night. But he got the job done.
Brooklynvegan said there was a setlist and maybe there was one but they weren’t playing from it, they were winging it. A small but active mosh pit took care of in front of the stage, on the stage the drummer and Nathan kidded around until Nathan was ready for another song when he shut him up. They played “King Of The Beach” early and Nathan has a great rock and roll voice -i hadn’t noticed that before, and a manner easy going after the drummers ramshackle, “if it wasn’t for you we would be just drunk, stoned assholes, now we are drunk, stoned assholes who are loved”.
And still the stop start is annoying, there is no flow to the songs and so when they get it together they are a thin as mercury, lightning rod punk pop laser of melody, and when they don’t they aren’t. But the alcohol, the anything else being injested, isn’t effecting the playing at all. The drummer is rolling off triplets like a fucking machine on fire on “So Bored” and “Green Eyes” the band sounds almost haunted by its own memory.
Earlier Nathan mentioned he was just back from Sweden where a girl said he looks like a troll, elsewhere he is so distracted the bands shouts of “Boss, what next Boss?” goes unheeded and towards the end he mentions Disney are suing him for calling a song “Mickey Mouse” -pretty ridiculous. Nathan then mentions that Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathizer and Disneyworld is like Nazi Germany. He reminds me of Courtney Love. At first they are like three Pete Doherty and then they are like three Courtney’s (cool, Live Through This Courtney of course).
Which leads me to the set. Wavves are a punky bright white surf West Coast cool, punk rock band with a leader of enormous talent.
Their set was messy but real and worth it.
No encore either.
I guess Nathan Williams is for real. I hope he doesn’t kill himself.