Afraid of Heights
Mom + Pop
by Larry Fitzmaurice
Afraid of Heights is the proper full-length follow-up to Wavves' 2010 breakthrough King of the Beach*.* Working with producer John Hill, it's Nathan Williams' best-sounding album to date, with touches of strings and background vocals from Jenny Lewis.
Featured Tracks:
"Sail to the Sun" — WavvesVia SoundCloud
"Demon to Lean On" — WavvesVia SoundCloud
The chatter surrounding Nathan Williams' activities has occasionally overshadowed the music itself. It's been five years since Williams' self-titled debut long-player as Wavves, so it's a fine time to step back and re-direct the conversation. Wavves and 2009's triple-v'd follow-up featured monochromatic garage grinders buried under blown-out production-- not exactly the work you'd expect from someone who'd later write a Christmas song for Target with his girlfriend. It's possible that many present-day Wavves fans are unaware that those albums and his sound has changed accordingly. The beery, brawny King of the Beach from 2010 featured improved production and sharp, sticky hooks that were perfectly suited to soundtrack shows on MTV (which they eventually did.)
Following some label drama that almost derailed that album's creation, Williams took the DIY approach by self-releasing 2011's guest-laden Life Sux EP; two years later, he and current musical co-conspirator Stephen Pope have returned with the proper follow-up to Beach, Afraid of Heights. The record is Williams' first for Warner Bros. and Sony-affiliated imprint Mom + Pop, but Williams self-financed the album's recording over the course of a year. It's a big-ticket record made with indie-minded ethos, and the album's tangle of contradictions befits a guy with such a history of contrarianism.
King of the Beach had real-deal rock guy Dennis Herring (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse) behind the boards; Afraid of Heights features John Hill, a producer with modern pop bonafides from Rihanna to M.I.A. You can hear his touch in the pretty-sounding keyboard-mellotron loop that's interrupted by a low, persistent inner-ear thud in the opening of the typically bratty "Sail to the Sun", and Afraid of Heights as a whole is truly a headphones album, a luxuriously produced record tempered with a few moments of noisy studio trickery (notably, the scuzzy rumble of "Mystic") for contrast. Five songs feature strings; one features slide guitar.
As for the songwriting, Afraid of Heights finds Williams taking these new elements-- including guest vocalist Jenny Lewis' contributions, only barely heard on the album's melodically winding title track-- and rolling them up tightly in his familiar forward churn. K**ing of the Beach's self-loathing-as-swag anthem "Idiot"-- one of the most straightforwardly ear-catching songs on that album-- is a jumping-off point. This means that there's less of the formless, small-scale exercises that largely made up Beach's back half; some will miss the eccentricity, but Afraid of Heights' energizing consistency makes for a fair trade.
Williams' lyrics are still dripping with self-loathing. Life Sux's "I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl" drew sneers based on the title alone, but the sentiment never seemed explicitly careerist; at some point, you'd have to assume that this guy would rather do anything else rather than continue to address his own personal insufficiencies. Here, "Dog" and "Beat Me Up" deal with subservience in relationships, while the sprightly "Lunge Forward" ends with a wish for the end of humanity. There's talk of graves, death, bruises, and the eventuality of being alone. The negativity is sometimes so pronounced it's almost funny: "Gimme a Knife" closes with, "I loved you, Jesus/ You raped the world/ I feel defeated/ Guess I'll go surf."
The album's most enjoyably surprising moment arrives when he turns his attention outward. "Cop" is a love song, albeit a strange one: it's written from the perspective of the gay lover of protagonist John, who's just killed a policeman. "Sit back and relax, John, just go home and quickly wash your hair/ Lay back in my arms," Williams sweetly sings, backed by a distant acoustic shuffle reminiscent of Jay Reatard's cover of Chris Knox's "Turn Down the Shades". Some strings and stray whistling enter, and the song swells into a big, beatific wash of light before the hook comes in again. It is, without doubt, the most lovely and affecting piece of music Williams has written.
Afraid of Heights is the first Wavves album longer than 40-minutes and sometimes it drags. Williams is an avowed Weezer disciple, and accordingly his more dirge-y creations have always reminded me of the sluggishness found on mid-period Weezer albums like Maladroit. Although he mostly does the the more low-key material right here, "Everything Is My Fault" is a real momentum-killer, especially when you realize there's still 10 minutes of album material to get through. Still, Afraid of Heights provides plenty of bummed-out pleasures and Williams' obvious talent is easy to take for granted. At "Lunge Forward"'s chaotic peak, he cries, "None of you will ever understand me" and that may be true, but his music continues to make perfect sense.