Here is part of Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork’s explanation of what happened at a recent Wavves set at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival. The full article is here.
Still unsatisfied [with the sound] more than 15 minutes into their scheduled 2:20 a.m. set time, Nathan finally succumbed to shouts from the restless crowd and began lifelessly strumming his guitar in what appeared to be totally random chord progressions. As drummer Ryan struggled in vain to find a tempo for Nathan’s seasick improvisation, the music slowly turned into a half-speed, instrumental approximation of the Wavves ballad “Weed Demon”– a song which, on record, doesn’t have a drum part.
After five minutes of directionless strumming and arbitrary snare hits, Nathan dodged the evening’s first bottle and decided to wind the aimless tune to an abrupt close. Then, rubbing his hands against his face, he declared in annoyed resignation, “All right, hi everybody, we’re Wavves,” and launched into an off-key version of “Summer Goth.” The band’s playing improved steadily until hitting a sort-of stride with a sloppy rendition of the song everyone had come to see, “So Bored”. For a brief moment, the crowd was rapt, singing and pogoing along, earning the band a fleeting moment of goodwill.
But things declined quickly from there, as between songs, Nathan began ineptly mocking the crowd (”Ooooooh, I’m on ecstasy!”), going off at length about his preference for California over Spain, and eventually telling them the festival was “one of the coolest things we’ve been part of in a while,” dripping with sarcasm. Finally, fed up with Nathan’s petulant behavior, Ryan ran out from behind his drumkit and poured a full cup of beer over Nathan’s head. The act would be met with their most enthusiastic applause of the evening.
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After cancelling the following night’s tour date, Wavves’ Nathan subsequently posted a blog entry about the incident in which he said, “mixing ecstasy valium and xanax before having to play in front of thousands of people was one of the more poor decisions I’ve made(duh) and I realize my drinking has been a problem now for a good period of time.”
The blog post has since been deleted. Here is the full statement, as preserved by Google’s cache:
‘I think in the back of my head I knew I wasn’t exactly mentally healthy enough to continue to tour the way I have been since February. Honest truth is this has all happened so fast and I feel like the weight of it has been building for months now with what seems like a never ending touring and press schedule which includes absolutely zero time to myself. I’m sorry to everyone who has put effort into this and to everyone who supported me. Mixing ecstasy valium and xanax before having to play in front of thousands of people was one of the more poor decisions I’ve made(duh) and I realize my drinking has been a problem now for a good period of time. Nothing else I can do but apologize to everyone that has been affected by my poor decision making. I made a mistake. Not the first mistake I’ve made and it for sure wont be the last. I’m human. Don’t know why I chose the biggest platform I could imagine to lose my shit, but that’s life. You live and you learn.”
Finally, here are a couple of good recent interviews with Wavves.
