Wavves' 'Cherry Soda' Arrives Stripped of Max Bemis Collab

Nathan Williams released his tenth album as Wavves, Cherry Soda, this week — but the record almost shipped as a collaboration with Max Bemis of the 2000s pop-punk band Say Anything. That version, announced this past summer, fell apart after allegations emerged that Bemis had engaged in inappropriate communication with underage fans. Four months, several release-date pushbacks and a tracklist reshuffle later, the album arrives fully Bemis-free.

The break was not quiet. In a series of statements, Williams claimed that Bemis was barely involved in Cherry Soda's writing process and promised that it "wouldn't be hard" to re-record the album to fully remove his contribution. The revised press materials, notably, contain no mention of the swap that brought the album to its current state.

What was the original plan?

Williams was quoted in the album's original press materials as having sought out Bemis "to make a mall emo record" and "see what an early 2000s Wavves emo record would sound like." On paper, the pairing made sense. Both artists' sounds are tied to past eras of rock, with Williams' aesthetic most commonly associated with the weeded-out indie gold rush of the early 2010s.

The emo framing might scan as redundant given the Wavves catalog, which already includes Travis Barker collaborations and a song called "Emo Christmas." But Williams has often strayed from the chain-walleted sound that once propelled him to equal parts fame and infamy, having tried his hand at doo-wop, psych-pop, and noisy post-hardcore.

What does the music actually deliver?

Last year's Spun, bright, slick and Barker-assisted, was a slight return to form, but its unmemorable melodies read as the work of a songwriter on autopilot. Against that baseline, the trio of songs that open Cherry Soda marks a welcome surprise and a slight improvement on its predecessor's monochromatic blare.

• "We Get Around" rolls forth with oceanic six-stringed simplicity and a faux-Brian Wilson midsection to match.
• "Pinesol" — one of a few cuts that survived the culling in the album's Bemis-less assemblage — is one big skyscraping hook that would have flattened a festival side-stage circa 2014.
• "Layover in Dublin" carries a grungy sweep that would have been called "radio-ready" back when the FM dial was king, and it practically explodes with each scream Williams lets loose on its chorus.

What does this change for Williams?

The practical question is whether a scandal-scrambled album can stand on its own. On the early evidence — three stronger-than-expected openers — the re-recorded Cherry Soda does more than salvage the project; it quietly beats the autopilot of Spun. How the full record holds up beyond that opening stretch will determine whether album ten becomes a footnote to the Bemis fallout or the moment Williams' songwriting snapped back into focus.