After a solid pairing of the Darker My Love/A Place to Bury Strangers show the previous night, I dropped by LA’s Echoplex last Saturday for a late evening with two of San Diego’s best bands: Wavves and The Soft Pack.
Arriving just after 10 p.m., the venue’s long walk-up- generally crowded- was fairly under packed, I thought, for a show boasting as many blog-praised gold stars as both scuzz rock duo Wavves and LA-via-San Diego lo-fi garage rockers The Soft Pack (who’ve already nabbed a NYT write-up in their young age) have racked up. Couldn’t complain, though about the ease it was getting a spot near the front, which, I figured is where I should stand seeing as how at the previous night’s show, I was stuffed side stage about 15 meters back.
Having followed the scene surrounding LA-via-San Diego band The Soft Pack for quite some time (seeing The Plot to Blow Up The Eiffel Tower with 30 kids in a basement back in 2003-ish), my excitement peaked as the band clambered on stage just after 11 p.m.
"These guys are fu**ing on it tonight,” shouted someone from the crowd before the band had even really played anything. Singer Matt Lamkin responded, "I had a cup of coffee." Quickly, without surprise, the guy in the crowd shouted back, “I had whisky!" And so it went as the band casually lurched into their set of cannonball-styled garage rock/power-punk tunes. Think Richard Hell, or maybe The Buzzcocks with a little Pacific Ocean sand in their shoes and you are on the right track.
To sum up the appreciation of a Soft Pack show, much, as in the simplistic joy of the above crowd member, the band simply are just ‘on’ in a live setting. Take standout “Parasites,” from their 2008 7” of the same name, with Brain Hill’s skip-along beat, guitarist Matty Lantzman’s Gang of Four-esque robo-peeled-riffs and Lamkin’s drawled-out repetition- bearing the almost-bored, stern-faced approach of one Ian Curtis- of the few catchy lines that make up the track.
The band aren’t smashing new ground with their music; The Exploding Hearts, the above-mentioned Gang Of Four and Richard Hell, The Strokes, The Velvets and The Modern Lovers all kind of did that, but it doesn’t really matter all that much because simply put, The Soft Pack make refreshing, straight-ahead, backboned power-punk-- surf-twist included-- that doesn’t need to be anything else but ‘on’ for its’ listener. Their bullet-holed album (yes, they shot the jacket with .22 caliber shells) has, for good reason, spent a bit of time on my turntable.
Video- The Soft Pack- "Parasites" live at The Echoplex 10.17.09
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Wavves-men (sounds like a 60’s pop band huh?) Nathan Williams and current drummer Zach Hill quickly set the Echoplex stage up as the clock rounded 11:30. Their set sounded as I would’ve imagined; fast, distortion-soaked and completely brazen. Yet again, Zach Hill proved his worth in skins as one of today’s best drummers.
Pre-launch, while the band asked to have the “guitar as loud as possible,” the guy next to me lit up his joint. As he exhaled his first puff, the show started amidst the sour smell, the brutish drum crash and the bouncy, wail of front man Williams. As the show progressed, though and the chants for fan-favorite “Weed Demon” grew more frequent, it seemed like the title became not a song, but rather fittingly directed at a person. The track wasn’t played and this lone fan appropriately took the title when the night ended, rather abruptly I might add.
As the set drove on, I pondered the whether or not there was a certain allure to a Wavves show. There isn’t much of a difference between one performance of a baby-faced guy rambling on a distortion-crazed guitar, half-yelling stumbled lyrics, while another hairy-faced guy destroys a drum kit with a quite-amazing fiery speed (unless you’re packed in at a Spanish festival tent, but that’s in outlier territory). I got it. Countless bands, who probably never even left their basement, have done that. It’s actually really worth seeing a few times sure, but I just wondered where a band, well a guy- Williams, after putting out a great debut album like Wavves, would take this live thing in the next couple of years.
Would Wavves become a circle-pit, crowd participation band a la Dan Deacon or The Death Set? Not likely, after witnessing Williams’ stoic denial of playing heavily-requested “Weed Demon.” Another route maybe, where he makes friends with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon and turns Wavves into a full-fledged two-hour long experiment through pan-African rhythms, enveloping noise and the feedback of your mind on fuzz-guitar? I wondered about an ATP-curation nom in his future. Hmm.
Was “something greater” needed at all? Was this live show boring me? Well, if this existentialist daydream ensued, who knows. I instead roused myself and simply watched the stage. After that song, I knew that Williams’ messy playing style had said it all: why not just continue with Wavves on its current track- a sonic means to a scrappy, youthful punk exuberance that really needs no further meaning than ‘just because’ on its side. In their live review, The New York Times called a Wavves show “through a haze, lightly (smells like summer spirit).”
This fact that one might certainly digest nothing more than a fun-in-the-sun-type romantic sentiment from a Wavves show was realized when I remembered the gushy statements of the fan next to me prior to the set that night as I walked out of the Echoplex.
“Have you heard them?” She asked her friend.
Waiting for no real response, she said, in the way you do when really excited- pausing between each word, “Oh. My. God. That's my boyfriend. Nathan Williams.”
“Who?” the friend asked, still seemingly confused.
“That guy,” she said pointing to the short singer.
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