I’m sure you know who Wavves are by now so I’ll spare the introduction and lame band references (nirvana vs. early blink 182 vs. vhs vs. scratchy btw lol). We were supposed to meet up and have a chat but their van broke down on the way to the London show so we had a telephone chat with Nathan instead.

Hey how’s it going?

It’s going well, I’m in London right now at a friend’s house playing the new Call of Duty, it’s really good.

What happened yesterday? Did you get stranded on the motorway or something?

Oh I don’t know, something was wrong with the water, there was a leak or something – but no we didn’t get stranded; we rented a car and packed as much stuff in it as we could and drove down and borrowed equipment and stuff.

Has that happened to you much before?

No, but the first show that we played out here the airport lost all my equipment and I had to borrow stuff then as well so that’s happened a couple of times now.

What do you do when you’re hanging around waiting for shows to start?

What do we when we’re just waiting around? Uh, we drink, we play college drinking games – that’s what we do to have fun.

All day.

Ha, no we have xbox and a TV in our van so we just play Call of Duty pretty much.

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Do you miss the states at all when you’re on tour?

Yeah, I mean, not the states – I miss California when I leave, I don’t care about the rest of the united states. No that’s not true, I do. I just miss the weather when I’m over here touring in winter that’s all, but it’s always fun to come so it’s cool.

There’s a load of hip-hop on your blog, do you secretly want to be a rapper?

Oh I don’t want to be a rapper no, I just like rap music. I’m not the real Slim Shady.

What was the first record you bought?

Oh the first record, oh man I don’t know. Let’s see, I got Oasis ‘What’s The Story Morning Glory’ on cassette. That was probably the first cassette I got that wasn’t like The Beatles and the Beach Boys and like, nerdy stuff.

What was the first record you got that make you think you wanted to play music?

I don’t know if it was a specific record, I used to watch the VHS of Hard Day’s Night a load when I was a kid, when I was really young and I kinda always wanted to play music. But the first record that made me want to play in a band was like, I don’t know, it was probably Nevermind.

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How was it recording the new album with different band members (two former members of Jay Reatard’s band joined Wavves)?

It was cool, that beeping sound is really awesome (some beeping noise on my phone, whuuups) I feel like I’m on a call from jail right now. No, it was really cool working with everyone; the engineer, the producer and Steve and Billy. It was cool to be in that creative environment because I was there for like two months basically.

Yeah, that’s the first album you’ve recorded in a studio right? How did that compare to recording the first two?

It was a lot different, there’s really no comparison; recording in your parent’s garage and recording in a million dollar studio, but yeah it was a really cool experience. It was fun to have a producer and an engineer, especially a producer  and an engineer who knew what they were doing. Like I could do something with my mouth, trying to tell them what to do and they were like, “oh yeah I know how to do that.”

Were you nervous about playing the new songs live?

Oh no. No, it was cool – we played a show the day that the album leaked and people in the crowd, almost everybody, was singing the words, so it was perceived really well by the audience which was nice to see.

Is there anything you want to do on tour other than play shows? Are you looking forward to anything in particular?

I’m looking forward to going home and playing video-games at my house. No, there’s really nothing else I’d rather be doing, it’s stressful being on tour for like 5,6,7 weeks at a time or whatever, but it’s worth it.

photo Dan Zev/www.danzev.com

www.myspace.com/wavves

This entry was tagged as a hard days night, new call of duty is really good, nirvana nevermind, the real slim shady, wavves interview.