The Weirdos
Destroy All Music
(Bomp!, 2008)
It’s a curious thing. As collectors of punk ephemera age, maintain jobs that can support frivolous habits and continue to stock pile any remotely relevant snotty nugget, this community of nerds, grown ups and label heads seem to ever more resemble jazz collectors. Surely, there’s some overlap, but even in the releases being offered up, one notices similarities to track sequencing and packaging. For instance, would the listener prefer to hear the two existing studio versions of “Destroy All Music” back to back? To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter, because this release will be purchased by those that hoard music. These songs are all of a variety of punk that has been disseminated in the past thirty years. However, the Weirdos helped create what would become trite and clichéd. There are demos, most of which would eventually become the Destroy All Music disc and the single itself. Rounding the compilation out is the Who? What? When? Where? Why? mini-album, which seems to have more in common with ‘80s hard rock than punk. Curiously, the Dangerhouse single We Got the Neutron Bomb is absent. With that glaring omission collectors, geeks and completists will unquestioningly keep the Weird World compilations within arms reach.
Wavves
Wavvves
(De Stijl, 2009)
We’re about a week deep into the new year and this disc is and will continue to be the most checked, revered and discussed album. Whether it’ll matter in 2010 is another issue all together.
The dude that is Wavves seems to be consistent amidst his punkier compositions. The slow numbers, “Jetplane (Staying on a)” perhaps, finds the limited vocal and melodic palette accentuated by the space left in the track. Wavves is not a crooner and that’s why “No Hope Kids” ends up working out a bit better. But even here, the frailty of Wavves’ musicality is apparent.
Following that song is one of the numerous sound collage/avant-noise pieces that, if used sparingly, could prove an ingenious way to connect songs. Instead, it just allows listeners to figure out that the dude that is Wavves likes to get high – but we shouldn’t blame him.
At around thirty minutes, there seems to be a lot of wasted time. And Wavvves would really have been an incredible mini-LP or series of singles, but as a whole, the tracks aren’t assembled in a way that warrants all the hype. His writing covering the sun, goths and skating/surfing obviously comes from a goofy personal place and that’s why those seem to stand out.
But considering that in the last few months Wavves has put out this disc, a tape, another full length and a single if and when he figures out how to harness the thing inside him that drives his art, I’ll be listening.