The Witzard

CREDIT: Jesse Lirola Last night, without any prior wanrning, Wavves released a brand new song to Bandcamp, Spotify, and other like-minded digital streaming services. "Sinking Feeling" is, actually, Wavves' first proper single since their 2017 album, You're Welcome and their first with Fat Possum Records since 2010's King of The Beach. Last we heard from Wavves, they were actively planning a KING OF THE BEACH 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR, but that, like most things, was cancelled, re-scheduled to 10-11/2020, and has now, seemingly, been postponed indefinitely. Wavves' current line-up now consists of Nathan Williams, Stephen "Stevie" Pope , Alex Gates, and Ross Traver formerly of Culture Abuse. For lack of a better term, Wavves have always kinda been one of those "buzz" bands who have remained very popular within the Indie Rock blog circuits; frontman Nathan Williams even has/had a number of side-projects including both Spirit Club & Sweet...

It almost pains me to admit it at this point because I thoroughly enjoy their respective newer output(s) so much, but WAVVES and Cloud Nothings are two bands that I just didn't get upon their initial Indie blog break-out nor did I enjoy their purposely lo-fi brand of bedroom-recorded Scuzz-Rock . While veteran rapper-producer El-P is without a doubt a Cloud Nothings super-fan, WAVVES frontman Nathan Williams seems to be a little more vocal admirer; Dylan Baldi recently woke up hungover in Paris to a random text from Williams to the effect of "Yo, wanna make a record together?" He further described their nearly completed Dylan & The Dead -esque album to Exclaim! as something in-between Cloud Nothings & WAVVES with "another [sonic] element that wasn't present in either of our music before." Cloud Nothings finally unveiled the companion music video for their January-released lead single, "I'm Not Part of Me" yesterday, coinci...

It must be pretty hard to try to stay "Punk Rock," rebellious, and still keep food on the table these days; Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA V) was released last week and features a pretty awesome, broad-spanning in-game soundtrack. Rockstar uploaded an expansive 59-track 3 volume collection to iTunes: The Soundtrack, Original Music, and The Score (composed by Tangerine Dream ). Included within are tracks, both new and old, from the likes of Clams Casino , Tyler The Creator, Oh No , Yeasayer, Jai Paul , Lee "Scratch" Perry, Yellowman , WAVVES, and recently re-invigorated Hardcore super-group OFF! The Keith Morris -penned "What's Next?" was conjured up exclusively for GTA V and plays alongside Black Flag , Descendents, The Weirdos , and The Germs on a fictitious radio preset. Noisey reports that Morris, just off a stint with Black Flag off-shoot FLAG , should "head [in]to the studio soon to record a full-length of all new tracks." VICE R...

Just as Trent Reznor re-formed Nine Inch Nails after a nearly 5 year hiatus for their recent Hesitation Marks album and an upcoming 54-date world tour, comes the first full-fledged NIN sample-based Hip-Hop project: Isaiah Toothtaker & Jacob Safari 's ИOTHING EP ! The aspiring Arizona -based rapper and one-time WAVVES drummer constructed 8 tracks-worth of beats using unlicensed samples; ranging from "A Warm Place" to "The Day The World Went Away," hand-picked from across NIN 's broad-spanning discography. "It’s far from Linkin Park . God damn no. Ain't no Aerosmith and Run-DMC , ain't no Coldplay and Kanye shit, ain't no Onyx and Biohazard shit," Isaiah Toothtaker lamented to The Kid Mero at Noisey , who premiered ИOTHING EP . "This is a proper hit. Nine Inch Nails are some weirdos but so is Young Thug , you feel me?" he continued. Honestly, they're really on to something here, if you think about it....

Eternal Champ by Sweet Valley Now, this one should really apply to the gamut of college co-eds: Indie Rockers , Hip-Hopheads, Skater Punks , gamers, stoners, Hipsters bloggers, etc. ETERNAL CHAMP is a 13-track Instrumental Hip-Hop collection that's simply based around a bunch of samples pulled from Old School 1980-90's video game soundtracks. After a quick first listen, I hear bits and pieces of Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong , and random 8-bit arcade games. Brothers Nathan & Joel (KYNAN) Williams , acting together under the Sweet Valley moniker, recently recounted to Pitchfork that "The second one took a bit longer because we took a lot of samples straight from video game stuff. So, we had to play to certain levels to get the sounds that we wanted. We did a take that's all from Ocarina of Time , the N64 game." Nathan's the founding member of beloved Indie Punk band WAVVES and KYNAN is an amateur beat-making Hip-Hop producer. " Sweet Val...

(1.) I'm currently reading David Rosen's companion book, on which the TV show is based. Being a fresh-out-of-college writer at a similar life stage as the main character - Jason, I can relate very well to his short-comings. What's your take on I Just Want My Pants Back's overall story? I have not read the book but I did get to see a bunch of scenes in the first season when we were writing the music for it. As far as I can tell it's pretty dead on about how people our age act. Everybody is depressed. Everybody "self-medicates" with drinking and drugs. And everybody f*cks everybody in their social group. (2.) So, what was your first experience composing a score like? Maybe describe the writing process a little bit for the fans. It only took a few days to do this. The first day was definitely really awkward. Nathan and I sat in a room with like 15 different people involved with the show and watched scenes from the first season over and over again. T...

Wavves were always that obnoxious Indie band that just irked me. To be completely frank, I think that Wavves (2008) and Wavvves (2009) sounded like complete and total shit... and their instant success/immense mass media cover-age simply dumbfounded me. I'm open to nearly all forms of music, but theirs just seemed like musically-backed noise. So, when King of The Beach -related tracks started leaking online back in 2010, I was pleasantly surprised with what I heard! It seems as though head Wavve Nathan Williams is staying true to his reckless roots, while toning it down just a tad but @ the same time, in an effort to become a little more "mainstream" commercially viable . In the months since, Wavves have managed to pick up Jay Reatard 's old band, "The Reatards," performed on national TV with GZA , released follow-up effort, Life Sux EP ... and inked a licensing deal with MTV ! Nathan Williams' official title @ the music television network is ...

I have to admit, when Wavves first broke onto "the scene" in 2008-09, I really wasn't digging his output [ Wavves & Wavvves ] and didn't see the reason for all the attached media "hoopla." But with the addition of Zach Hill (Hella) Bill Hayes and Stephen Pope of Jay Reatard's "The Reatards," my view of the band slowly but surely changed. During this transition phase, frontman Nathan Williams seems to have gradually grown out of his initial messy, Noise Rock sound... and thank [Indie] God(s) , quickly ditched that "I'm cool/arrogant" shtick. This incarnation of Wavves subsequently laid down the tracks compiled on King of The Beach (2010); Included within are note-worthy Pop -based Surf Rock hits like: "Post Acid," "King of The Beach," and "Mickey Mouse." Bill Hayes has since been replaced by Jacob Cooper - former drummer of California's own The Mae Shi . Feel free to mosey...