Last Night: Wavves at Rickshaw Stop

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Wavves
Rickshaw Stop
Sunday, Sept. 7th, 2009

By Noah Sanders

So Much Better than: an 80-foot tall burning man.

After last night's Wavves show at Rickshaw Stop, a new trifecta of criteria has arisen for the near-perfect show.

One, the performance must fall on a holiday/on the final days of a "beloved" festival in the desert, concurrent events that have a positive effect of thinning out hyped shows. This leaves the clubs to the die-hards, the true fans who'd opted out of, say, bro-tastic floats down the American River in favor of a dimly lit room and one of California's best up-and-coming acts.

Two, you need a sense of youthfulness to the night. The Rickshaw crowd, appearing varied in age from just-teen to just-forty, crackled with impetuous energy. There was a glimmer of recklessness in the way the front three rows burst into a pogo-moshing hybrid on more than one occasion, as well as in the sweaty half-naked fight (a fight!) that ended with Wavves singer Nathan Williams rolling on the ground in an attempt to stop it. In layman's terms: the audience just seemed so edgy and so palpably excited for Wavves, their fervor could not be contained.

Three, you need a a headlining act as good as San Diego's Wavves. You could question a lot about the band's show beforehand: is Williams going to have another drug-induced breakdown? Is the noisy clatter of their self-titled debut going to translate to the live setting? Can the duo possibly live up to all that hype? But after one blistering, reverb-soaked blast of a song, punctuated by Zach Hill's monstrous drumming, questions fell to the wayside.

Last night's all-too brief set fell somewhere between the noise noodling of Sonic Youth, the extended hollers of Creep-era Radiohead, and the distorted yollers of a little band called Nirvana. This was punk-rock turned on its head - churning power chords, pounding rolls of snare and bass - but tinged with a healthy screen of art rock that elevated the music from the standard to the unforgettable.

Williams, looking barely old enough to have a learner's permit, was an impressive front man. He was a manic ball of slightly snide one-liners ("This is a new song. That means you haven't heard it before.") and visceral, sweaty energy. Yet the real star of the show was Hill, a hulk of man who attacked his drums as if they'd done him a grave disservice.

In the end, Wavves redefined what should be expected from live performances from here on out.

Critic's Notebook

Personal Bias: I incorrectly assumed Nathan Williams was a whiny fop prior to the opening chords of Wavves' Sunday night set.