Wavvves

Released barely four months after Wavves' self-titled debut, Wavvves finds San Diego native Nathan Williams moving to a more established label but otherwise leaving his lo-fi surf-punk aesthetic intact, right down to once again using an old snapshot of a pre-pubescent skateboarder as the cover image and varying the album's title solely by the addition of a third V. Perched somewhere between L.A.'s experimental punk scene (No Age, Abe Vigoda) and Brooklyn's neo-C86ers (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts), Wavvves is at first a daunting if not downright annoying listen, consisting almost entirely of harshly distorted two-minute blasts of overdriven guitars and drums with unintelligible vocals that sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a particularly mucky well. If that sort of thing doesn't appeal, don't bother to investigate further, but for the noise-tolerant, another go-round reveals the sort of '60s-derived hooks that made the Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy a feedback-pop landmark, delivered without irony or laconic standoffishness. Wavvves is the sort of album that promises more future greatness than it delivers in the present, but with the tiniest bit more polish, Wavves could be lo-fi's next big thing.