Andrew W.K: Wet Wet Wet.

I Get Wet is in stores now.

I think I got off on the wrong foot with Andrew W.K. While in Sydney recently he told me that his music was a force to unite people and to encourage everyone to get together and have a good time. I told him that what he said sounded like a scene from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Best to make up your own mind…

“This music is, as I see it truth and freedom expressed in a no holds barred way,” he explained. “I don’t own it, it belongs to every human being on the face of the Earth, and the main goal here is to make people feel good about themselves and the people around them. My goal is to continue to make the most exciting music I can, and to use it to make things OK in the world, and spread it as far as I can for the rest of my life.”

Genuine sentiment or genuinely full of shit, in the end it doesn’t really matter. While you may not believe the hype, there’s little doubt the big dumb rock cranked out by Andrew W.K. and band can be pretty good fun. Another Rave staffer actually told me Andy’s single Party Hard was the first guitar riff he’s actually laughed out loud at in years. Looking for a musical point of reference? It’s kind of a Zodiac Mindwarp meets Twisted Sister meets Bad News on a seventies glam rock trip kind of thing.

“I just consider myself a human being. I have the basics covered by basic good fortune. I have food, I have shelter, you know, general health and safety. So my life is just a party.”

Party being the I Get Wet buzzword. It’s Time To Party, Party Hard, Party Til You Puke… It’s also undoubtedly one of the most anthemic, hook laden albums you’re likely to hear this year.

“If you don’t have to worry 24 hours a day about where you’re going to get your next meal, then you’re just set. I owe my life, in a way, to all the people who’ve worked to make the kind of world we live in now where we have these opportunities. I know there’s going to be food at the store, that CDs are being made. Things that allow me to live in Heaven on Earth, basically. So it’s up to me to do what I love in believe in and do it the best I can, in the end I’ll end up helping and doing the right thing for everyone in a way. And this music represents that. It’s an invitation to party. Everyone is invited here, there’s nothing you have to do or look like or think or say to be a part of it. This is for a lot of people, not a few.”

“It’s for the 13 year old kid that likes science class and doesn’t drink or do drugs. Am I invited to this? Fucking of course. It’s the same wherever I go. It’s true human spirit revealed in song and sound and dance and light. We don’t lay it our here, we’re not drawing guidelines, there’s no attached meanings or messages here other than we want you to feel OK. If feeling OK means all you anger and hate as well as happiness is valid and good. Here’s my life, and this is what I can do with it.”

Andrew WK’s band, despite it’s over the top arena rock stylings, features members of some of the heaviest metal bands to have graced the face of the planet. Drummer Donald Tardy cut his teeth as a member of Florida act Obituary, while guitarist E. Payne and bassist Greg R come courtesy of another of Tardy’s projects, Intoxicated.

“I’d been trying really hard to put together a band, and I knew people in New York who knew someone who grew up with Don. So many things just lined up like this. I wrote him a letter to Donald, never having spoken to him and never having met him and sent him a tape asking him if he could maybe play on the recording. When he called me back it was really exciting.”

Despite the strength of the line up, the band did not perform the tracks on the album, the studio work being handled predominantly by Andrew W.K. himself, with studio musos filling in the gaps.

“I just wanted things to be like one giant sound playing all together. You don’t sit and listen to each individual thing, but just hear one big sound,” you know what I mean. “I always really liked well recorded soundtracks and classical music. Yesterday I was at the ABC, and they were recording a soundtrack for a movie there. It was amazing hearing a full orchestra, you have to really look around to see where a sound was coming from.”

“I like the way music can sound like it’s layered out and you’re listening too it, not just one thing from this speaker, one thing from hear. It’s like you’re there watching it.”

Party on, dude.