V

The results are unmistakable. Over V's 31 minutes, a listener could theoretically skip to any track and find themselves carelessly dancing into the void with the joyous, raucous tracks that Wavves has meticulously created.

Ultimately, there aren’t really any bad songs on this record, just songs that sound like something you may have heard Wavves or another band like them do before.

From “Heavy Metal Detox” on down Williams keeps V’s tracks compact and tight (none exceed three-and-a-half minutes in length). His wiggling, breezy guitar effects and vintage-pop woo-hoos coast beneath chugging rhythms from bassist Stevie Pope and drummer Brian Hill with such nonchalance that hooks occasionally scoot right by before you even realize your tapping your foot along with them.

This latest doesn't noticeably monkey with their formula, and with good reason. [Dec 2015, p.93]

Sure, it's steeped in familiarity, but it's also fun in the sun. [No. 125, p.60]

Despite a short list of shortcomings, V is Wavves’ best album since King of the Beach, and continues the strong run of stoner punk that Williams has been on the past five years.

Not many bands are able to rekindle their fire when the flame goes out as drastically as in Wavves' case. V shows that they're one of the few to pull it off, and they even sound better than ever.

V is a self-assured record penned by a songwriter who’s anything but sure of himself, and that dynamic shines right through the curtain of fuzz.

The temptation to change hasn’t been enough to find a marked difference between V and the rest of Wavves’ catalog. Instead, like so many of the artists who find and stick to a personal aesthetic, few new fans will be gained, but even fewer will be lost.

Somehow Williams is at his most charged-up and urgent when he’s at his bleakest, though you’d be hard-pressed to remember song titles here.

Wavves' second major-label LP delivers bored-and-wasted bellyaching with glossy concision.

The balance of good cheer and dark clouds is partly in the arrangements--V comprises exceedingly bright songs verging on true pop-punk. It’s probably the cleanest-sounding Wavves album to date.

V is a perfectly capable record, one that showcases what we’ve come to expect--and in many cases, enjoy--from Williams and his band. Even so, you wonder where else they might have gone.

Long-time fans--particularly of King of the Beach--will find plenty to like here, but it’s difficult not to feel that Williams, by now, has scraped the bottom of the pop barrel; his future, as No Life for Me suggested, looks brighter when his stylistic eye wanders elsewhere.