Play It Loud and Proud

It takes a lot of charisma to make filthy white jeans and greasy hair alluring, but Andrew W.K. has somehow managed it, just as he’s managed to make some of the biggest, dumbest, loudest and most compelling anthem rock to come along since Slade and Meat Loaf.

With many of the songs on his debut album, “I Get Wet,” shamelessly devoted to partying, it would be easy to dismiss this 23-year-old singer as a musical parody, a la Spinal Tap. But there is no irony in his head-banging, hair-swinging, fist-pumping metal celebrations. When Andrew W.K. serves up a song titled “It’s Time to Party,” he means it as an “unconditional, open-ended invitation” for everyone to enjoy life as much as he does.

“I want [listeners] to feel good about themselves, to feel good about me and feel better about the people around them, and about things to come and all things that have happened,” says the tall, dark and scruffy W.K. the day after his recent L.A. debut at the Whisky.

That spirit was very much in evidence on stage. Whether it was “Party Til You Puke” or another of his seemingly dunderheaded songs, the highly animated performer took time out from his air splits and karate kicks to smile and shake hands with enthusiastic fans. He even let a lucky few share the spotlight for a second before they dived back into the crowd, an especially generous move because there was hardly any room on stage between him and his five musicians.

W.K.’s music is nothing if not dense, with three thundering guitars, keyboards, thrashing drums and W.K.’s netherworldly vocals. A rave review in the Village Voice said his new record “could rouse even Ozzy to kick the camera crew out of his house, grab a bottle of Jack, peel out of his driveway and head out on a quest for the nearest kegger.” Any way you slice it, his music is loud, and that’s just the way he wants it.

“There’s no other option. That’s how music should be. The world is big, huge, loud, exciting, slamming, beautiful, magnificent and grand,” says W.K., who is in the midst of a six-week U.S. tour for the album. “Why would I whisper when I can scream? Why would I not use everything that I have at my little hands to make something that says how excited I am about life?”

His record won’t be out until Tuesday, but W.K. is already working to create an even bigger sound on his next release. He plans to add five more people to his act so there will be two drummers, three keyboardists and two “rabble-rousers”--guys with microphones who can run around the stage pumping up the crowd.

W.K. not only thinks big, he is big--tall and muscular. In person, he has so much energy you almost expect him to spontaneously combust. During lunch in the ‘50s-retro diner of the Standard Hotel on the Sunset Strip, he barely touches his sea bass and asparagus, preferring instead to chat excitedly about his album and to fiddle with the beaded curtain near the table.

An irrepressible optimist with a down-to-earth demeanor, direct stare and blinding smile, he exudes an unexpected friendliness. He even says “please” and “thank you” to the waiter.

It’s unexpected because this is a guy who hit himself in the face with a brick so his nose would bleed in his album cover photo, a guy who scowls in every other printed photo.

No rock star pomposity or dementia here, so why the crazy faces? “The world is a free place,” he says. “This music is freedom. I can do whatever I want at all times. It doesn’t have to make sense. I just like people to have fun.”

Andrew W.K. was born in L.A. but raised in Ypsilanti, Mich., where his father is a law professor at the nearby University of Michigan. The W.K. stands for Wilkes-Krier, a combination of his mother’s and father’s last names.

Although W.K. has been said to mean “White Killer,” “Wild Kid” and other things, these acronymic Rorschach tests are not his doing.

“The only thing I’ve ever said is this: Who Knows?”

He has been called Andrew W.K. since elementary school, when a teacher used the name to differentiate him from two other kids in his class--Andrew Cohen and Andrew Gilchrist. Although he used his full name when he began recording, W.K. is just easier, he says.

He started playing piano at age 4. Later, he learned to play guitar and drums. Although he grew up listening to his parents’ classical records, he converted to the metal subgenre known as grindcore as a teen. After playing in a few death-metal bands in the Detroit area, he moved to New York at 18. There he worked as a bubblegum machine salesman, parking attendant and waiter while masterminding his music at home. His goal: to make “the most exciting music possible.”

For the next couple of years he played “any show, any place, any time. I would do whatever it takes to continue on. That was my mind-set: Whatever it takes. The most miserable 10-hour bus ride to play for 10 people? Whatever it takes.”

Using a boom box, keyboard and microphone, he performed at Starbucks and other coffee shops and at art galleries, handing out home-recorded CDs to whoever wanted them. Through a “friend of a friend of a friend,” his debut EP, “Girls Own Juice,” released on Michigan-based Bulb Records in 1999, made its way to Dave Grohl. The former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman liked the CD so much he invited W.K. to open a few dates during his group’s tour.

W.K. accepted, although he was frustrated because he didn’t have a band. “I’d go out there with my microphone and run around in a circle, basically, as fast as I could.”

That same year, he moved to Seffner, Fla.--population 37,000--to start a band with Donald “D.T.” Tardy, the drummer for Obituary, a defunct ‘80s death metal group from the nearby town of Brandon. Earlier, W.K.’s manager had contacted Tardy to tell him “how this guy was just freaking on me and how he loves my drumming and how I should check it out,” Tardy told Kerrang! magazine in October. Tardy joined W.K. to form a band, which he recruited from his circle of friends .

His group intact, W.K. sought a major-label deal. He was rejected by several record companies before being picked up by Island two years ago on the strength of a demo tape.

W.K., who rents a room from a friend for $100 a month, is rarely home these days. Earlier this year he was on the road in Europe. When his U.S. tour ends in May, he’ll head to Japan and Australia.

W.K. travels light. His luggage consists of a black backpack and a white plastic grocery bag. Clearly, he doesn’t allow himself to be weighed down by such things as clothes, of which he has just a few. The back cover of “I Get Wet” shows W.K. after what appears to have been a daylong swim in a swamp, wearing what is fast becoming his look--a dirty T-shirt and faded-to-white Levi’s.

He wears it offstage. He wears it on stage.

“It shows up well,” W.K. says of the way he dresses. “That wasn’t even the idea initially. There was no idea. That’s just what I wore. I played shows and wore jeans and T-shirts.”

W.K. likes the simplicity of the outfit for himself and listeners, who are less likely to be distracted. They “can just get into the heart of the matter--get wet--get into the core of what’s going on, which is dancing and these songs and smiling and running around.”

Early in the day, W.K. is at the hotel for a photo shoot. It’s for the Abercrombie & Fitch “magalog,” which will have a music feature about him in its summer issue. W.K. opts for the T-shirt and jeans, even though the stylist has brought a rainbow of vintage Adidas sweatsuits for him to choose from.

He spends two minutes with the makeup artist, then hits the couch for pictures. It isn’t long before he’s couch surfing, balancing on one leg and yukking it up for the lens--crossing his eyes, baring his teeth, flexing his biceps and generally acting like a monkey. He’s as much a natural for the camera as he is for radio.

Some have described W.K.’s music as speed metal with a pop twist, or beautiful melodies played with aggression. One critic said his music sounded like puking garbage trucks. Another described him as a death-metal Elton John.

In a pop world that’s lost much of its ability to develop interesting and original characters, it’s no wonder the media have latched onto him. He’s as much a cultural phenomenon as a musician: England’s pop weekly NME--in its typical overstated enthusiasm--has put W.K. on its cover twice in the last five months, declaring him “bigger than Jesus” and the “saviour of music.” England’s the Face magazine called him “the first great rock star of the 21st century.”

But W.K. isn’t letting the journalistic hyperbole go to his head.

“It doesn’t really affect me at all. I don’t think anything needs to be saved. I don’t think things are awful and I’ve come along to fix them. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be alive,” says W.K., exuding a calm confidence devoid of pretense. “I’m just happy to be here. I’m honored and very, very happy that people like the same thing I like. That’s how I take it. “

Still, not everyone is a fan. His music tends to provoke extreme responses. At the Whisky, crowd reaction was mixed. Plenty of die-hards jumped up and down and sang along, but just as many people stood motionless. They had heard the hype but were waiting to be converted. Then again, his record isn’t out yet, and it only gets better with repeated listening.

“You either totally love it or you don’t,” says Lewis Largent, the executive who signed W.K. to Island. “I think it’s really good for music that there is no middle ground.”

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Susan Carpenter is a Times staff writer.