Not that there was ever anything other than the widest of definitions, but it’s not been a great period recently for lovers of the thing that was early noughties’ indie rock.
Brit-wise, think for example Art Brut, Good Shoes or maybe even The Holloways. Snobs might say that this was a good thing, with that period now widely dismissed as the indie landfill era, but whilst nostalgia is rarely the sole basis for interesting music, it’s also true that once experienced the pull of hearing nerdy tunes in health hazard venues never really leaves you.
It might be considered a bit weird for an addition to this catalogue to be produced by a band from San Diego and not Streatham, but this is the twenties and being open to anything is, we accept, a must-have quality.
Led by singer/songwriter Nathan Williams, Wavves emerged in 2008 at roughly the same time extinction level events saw off most of his British compatriots, but released two years later the band’s third album King Of The Beach effortlessly landed neat, scuzzy surf-pop mixed up with gobby punk lite.
Williams, however, is not your average postgraduate with a copy of C86; once breaking down onstage at Primavera and assaulting the band’s then drummer, he’s also nobody’s ray of sunshine, quoted on the journey by which Hideaway arrived with: ‘I don’t have it in me to say that things are so much better, it’s just not my story…I’ve also learned to realize there just isn’t redemption.’
Circumstances played a major part too: stopped from tenth anniversary touring of King Of The Beach by the pandemic, and having exited a frustrating period affiliated to a major label, he found himself coming up with new material in a shack in his parent’s back garden.
Creatively wandering, it was the introduction to TV On The Radio’s Dave Sitek which got him back on track, the pair mutually bonding over, ‘Johnny Cash deep cuts and honky tonk obscurities’.
At just nine songs and with a shade under thirty-five minutes running time, the window of opportunity for getting stuff off his chest though is limited.
Opener Thru Hell is snotty, bratty, early-Strokes-y but less narcotic and more dystopian, while the title-track’s raspy uneasiness draws together paranoia such as, ‘I’ll do my best to hideaway/From all of the bullshit chasing me/I don’t care if times erasing me/It’s been torture existing this long’.
It may seem unlikely, but despite the undertones much of Hideaway sounds fantastic, from the neat, hook-full garage-punk of Help Is On The Way to Honeycomb’s kitsch psychedelia and the glorious riff laden chops of Marine Life.
This stored up goodwill means that The Blame’s square dance awkwardness isn’t quite as out of sync as it could be, while the bubblegum pastiche of Caviar rounds out an album on which the listener can never quite be sure which of their buttons should be being pressed.
Uncertainty? Yes. But while given that he’s so disarmingly self-effacing there’s often more than a thought for Williams’ state of mind, his partnership with Sitek has undoubtedly helped to realise Wavves’ best material in over a decade.
It comes from a place you hope nobody stays for long, but Hideaway is proof that indie is about more than just pretty girls and boys you spot on the Jubilee Line.