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Nov 12, 2015 Web Exclusive By Dan Lucas

In a really clever, niche and in no way accidental manner, Wavves might have come up with the perfect allegory for modern life with their fifth studio album, V. After all, back in 1997 Radiohead sang about a man who “buzzes like a fridge,” anthropomorphising the daily grind with a neat little turn of phrase that still resonates 18 years later. V is an album that really buzzes like a fridge.

With its incessantly droning guitars, simple rhythms, vague hooks, and dull repetitiveness, V feels far, far longer than its 32 minutes. There may be 11 songs on here, but they all blend into one and to describe them individually is pointless. “Tarantula” is the longest, at three minutes and 21 seconds, but it felt like a self-indulgent seven-minute non-epic. You get the sense that the only way Wavves were able to achieve a “slacker rock” sound was by being genuinely lazy.

Perhaps this is a pop-punk thing. When Weezer went bad (like, really bad), we criticised them for sounding like past-it pastiches of their earlier selves; Make Believe sounded like a bunch of older guys trying to recapture the sound of their youth but not having their hearts in it, for example. Wavves, on the other hand, sound like a band trying to recapture the sound of early Weezer—or, more specifically, trying to recapture the sound of “Surf Wax America”—without ever having made anything that good in the first place.

V isn’t the worst album you’ll hear this year. There isn’t anything specifically awful about any of the songs and you can imagine any one being played at a Californian stoners’ beach party and no one minding. But if you put the entire album on, no one is coming to your next one. (www.wavves.net)

Author rating: 3/10