I should not like Andrew W.K. Aside from being 26 and soooo over the whole
high-school, jock-rock, beer-commercial thing, I came of age under the reign
of Cobain, when rock music got serious. Naive songs about partying and
seizing the day, fist-pumping anthems with empowerment-seminar lyrics should
have no place in my life, unless it's for kitsch or nostalgia purposes.
Yeah, and the Death Star was supposed to be indestructible, too.
Andrew Wilkes-Krier sprang from Zeus' head last year fully formed, packing a
jaw-dropping debut album ("I Get Wet") that flattened its listeners beneath
a wall of guitars and drums, roared at them with a thousand voices and then
tickled them with bright piano lines that slid around on top like sweat on a
stripper.
"I Get Wet" was the answer to a question everyone who thought the new garage
bands were "okay" was asking: Isn't rock supposed to be fun?
At the same time, the album was a question itself, namely, what's this guy
going to do next? A.W.K. had turned on the after-burners so completely that
he seemed to have painted himself into a corner. His solution? Go deep.
Where "I Get Wet" advocated a celebration for its own sake, only
occasionally shifting into the kind of "live your dream right now"
proselytizing that peppers W.K.'s interviews and websites, "The Wolf" is a
nearly continuous call to action, a dizzying song-cycle that deepens both
Andrew's message and his appeal.
Nearly every song is a positivist island unto itself, from the slamming
"Tear It Up" to the teary monster-ballad "Never Let Down." Only one song
mentions partying, and even "Long Live The Party" (after a thrash-guitar
opening and a chorus of Andrews bellowing their desire for a, um, party)
morphs into a rallying cry for hard work and its rewards:
The more that you can give it
Then the more it will be
And if you do not have it
You can take it from me...
The song builds with operatic grandeur, piling up soaring keyboards to the
roof-tops, finally crashing down on its defiant closing statement: "We have
found our pride!"
The easy way out when describing W.K.'s production is to liken it to
high-gloss 80's bands like Def Leppard and Chicago, and there's a lot of
that in there. But there's also the rock-theater of Queen, the masterful
layering of Phil Spector, and the thick tones of Sabbath. "The Wolf's"
thundering sound is decidedly less analog-era than those guys, though, and
W.K. has spoken admiringly of Max Martin (writer/producer of Britney and
Backstreet mega-hits) and his knack for hugeness. With these gurus in his
rearview, Andrew mixes in frequent blasts of metal intensity and manages to
build a steamroller all his own. Bottom line, Andrew W.K. is not in the
lo-fi business. He makes blockbusters, and to hold him to some backwater
purist ethic is to miss the point.
He may be the only one of the new kids bringing back the Wall of Sound, but
that doesn't mean W.K.'s isn't changing things up sonically as well as
thematically. While close enough to "I Get Wet" in style and execution (and
presentation; the two covers are like opposite sides of a beast/man coin) to
qualify as a companion album, "The Wolf" pushes the lead-guitar much further
than its predecessor. "Never Let Down" and the incredible closing trifecta
of "Really In Love", "The End of Our Lives" and "I Love Music" all feature
guitar lines so heroic they recall Slash at his November-rainiest.
And everywhere you turn there are those call-and-response vocals. It's like
having a gang of metalheads in each speaker, exhorting you in turn to be
strong, to follow your heart, and to never give up, up, up, up. One of the
reasons A.W.K. concerts are so much fun is the camaraderie that comes when
fully half of each song is sung by the crowd.
Both of Andrew's albums impart a sense of place greater than the sum of
their tracks. "I Get Wet" is the sound of a flying beer cup; listening to
it is like diving into the humid air of an overstuffed house-party. "The
Wolf" feels more like the music of a dreamworld - to surrender to its
enveloping layers is to watch a boundlessly creative intellect bring the
sounds in his head to life as quickly as he hears them. As Andrew himself
sings in "Totally Stupid":
If you have a heart that's in pain
Don't be afraid
You're not to blame
There's a better world inside of us
Where we always thought it was
You don't need to hide
You can open up your eyes
And you'll discover
That there is another world.
Now, if you think, as a lot of people do, that the guy's just blowing smoke,
and that his public persona is as much a fabrication as that of RuPaul or
Stone Cold Steve Austin, lyrics like these might seem pretty calculated in
their innocence. On that score, I'll just say that if W.K. is playing a
character, he's doing it so well and so consistently that it might as well
be real. The amount of loving attention that was lavished on every detail
of this album is hard to fake.
But there's the genius of Andrew W.K.; he can be approached from many
directions. If you believe he's the savior of rock and he's talking right
to you when he says to "do all the stuff that you love," then listening to
"The Wolf" is like mainlining inspiration. If you think he's peddling
over-produced snake-oil, you can still play his music and laugh your ass
off.
One thing's for sure: When, in the middle of "Really In Love", Andrew sings
the priceless line "I really really really really want you," that shit's
funny no matter what side of the fence you're on.
And when was the last time a record had *everybody* smiling? |