Diatribe Of The Day: In Defense Of Nathan Williams (Wavves)


Wavves @ SXSW 2009

A few weeks ago, Wavves had a meltdown on stage at a big music festival in Spain which Pitchfork called “the most epic onstage meltdown a band of their small size could conjure”. Ever since being awarded “Best New Music” from Pitchfork earlier this year, Wavves had become the target of scorn for being over-hyped from both critics and other musicians, and this latest fiasco has helped villianize the 22 year old San Diego dude behind this project even further. Since I was digging Wavves‘ records before Pitchfork even began its lovefest, I figured I would talk down the mob a little bit and put this tabloid-esque drama in some perspective. If you don’t care about Wavves or any of this hooey, then you might want to skip this read.

First, for those of you who don’t read Pitchfork regularly, let me catch you up to speed. The Wavves backlash began culminating at SXSW this year, embodied by a band called Psychedelic Horseshit wearing “Wavves Suxx” t-shirts and then giving a novel sized interview about how much they hated Wavves and fellow lo-fi acts that you can read here. Then, a few weeks ago my twitter feed was overloaded with twats from P4K’s Ryan Schreiber detailing the Wavves meltdown as it was happening as if it was the Iranian election. I then had to read it all again in a lengthy news post. Then just as I was heading to Bonnaroo, I see P4K giving news headlines to an interview with Black Lips‘ Jared Swilley where he completely trashes the kid for his meltdown. The pile-on against Nathan Williams has been so massive, that Grizzly Bear was joking about the situation:

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SXSW Day 2 (Thursday): I Guess I’m Gloating


All Photos by Clint Miller

We started day two with a mad dash through traffic to make it to the I Guess I’m Floating day party in time to catch Oh No Oh My. We made it moments after they began their set, and they went on to play all my favourites off of Dmitrij Dmitrij plus a new one. It was a really good first set of the day.

Next up was a band called Arizona. I have no idea how I have heard of this band, but for some reason the name sticks out to me. They turned out to be great, with some serious guitar jams. The lead singer had a really unique, weird voice that added an interesting dimension to their sound. Check it:


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