San Diego’s Nathan Williams began his work as Wavves in his parent’s house. Just another teenager with a guitar and a four-track recorder, but managed to create a couple of the noisiest and catchiest records in lo-fi garage rock history. After the straightforward appeal of Wavves set in after two records, 2010’s King of the Beach dropped, which showed Williams’ appeal for psychedelics grow and added some cleaner tones and production. On King of the Beach, things were still bright, fun and adventurous in the lyrics, (“I’m stuck in the sky, I’m never coming down”), but Wavves efforts after this album began to change. With the Life Sux EP that came out in 2011, the music surrounding William’s lyrics was still groovy and accessible, but his lyrics gained a negative perspective (“You’re no fun, you’re just dumb”). This years effort, Afraid of Heights is the logical next step in Nathan Williams perspective and is also a solid collection of well-constructed, catchy garage rock, and pop-punk tracks.
A fair amount of variety is presented in the production of Afraid of Heights, with the lo-fi grumbles of “Mystic” contrasting with the clean sound of singles like “Gimme a Knife”. On “Mystic” William’s vocals are barely comprehensible as the song grooves along, which is reminiscent of the eponymous Wavves and Wavvves records that we first heard. After “Mystic” winds down, it’s immediately followed by the clean-cut and easily understandable lyrics of “Lounge Forward”, which sounds like an odd transition, but works flawlessly. More variety presents itself on songs like “Cop”, which is a song that utilizes some of the cleanest tones I’ve heard Wavves work with. It has a bouncy, folky quality and a great catchy chorus, and really shows how well Williams can layer multiple guitar parts.
“Everything is My Fault” is another track that stands out stylistically by bringing a psychedelic and downtempo groove to drive the song. It’s also one of Williams’ most contemplative songs on the record, where he’s constantly putting himself at blame and stating “I don’t understand at all”. According to Williams, he said “I was a real cocky motherfucker when I started doing this, but now not so much… In general, the realness of life starts to hit you later on”. This mentality is very evident in “Everything is My Fault”, as well as multiple other tracks on Afraid of Heights. From Williams’ boredom on the track “Lounge Forward” to the submissive theme presented on “Dog”, he isn’t altogether stoked on everything like he once was, even if it’s not always obvious in the tone of his vocals. The emotion driving the upbeat single “Paranoid” is also self-explanatory, even if the song is one of the more catchy and positive sounding songs on the record.
Even though a fair bit of negativity presents itself lyrically on Afraid of Heights, much like Wavves Life Sux EP, it sounds like Nathan’s okay with it. These themes may be pessimistic to a degree, but the music that they are lined to is fun, catchy and upbeat for the most part, making a lot of this album still very easy to groove along to. To anyone that was purely a fan of Wavves earlier work, they likely fell off the bandwagon after King of the Beach, because Nathan Williams has found a new appreciation for cleaner and higher quality recordings and it shows. A new set of influences also display themselves on Afraid of Heights, which only leads to the question: whats next for Wavves? Whether he decides to continue on the path to slicker production or reverts to his roots, I’ll come alone for the ride.