The Wave Pictures make music we can’t stop listening to, and they’re unstoppable at it. With over ten studio albums in as many years, they’re back in Brighton to celebrate a new vinyl-only release ‘A Season In Hull’.
It’s not the first time we’ve caught them here, as you can see from our 2012 review. This time frontman David Tattersall opens with a confession. He’s disappointed to be playing here so early in the tour, because Brighton’s always their favourite crowd to perform to and always gives the loudest cheer. Testament to his favouritism, the full house is brimming at the Green Door Store.
Exuding a jovial charm and wit throughout, The Wave Pictures deliver song after song, old and new. Lyrically astute and poetically perceptive, Tattersall has to be one of the greatest songwriters we know yet he’s greatly underrated. He’s able to convey the ordinary and the meaningful in a way you’ve never heard it before. Who else could captivate you with new song ‘Cream Coloured And Maroon’, a short story in prose about the colour of his favourite shirt?
The accomplished trio are joined on stage by percussionist David Beauchamp, who features on the album. Although youthful and endearingly comical in their delivery – with the set featuring a false start, a broken string and a missing drummer, Jonny “Huddersfield” Helm, who disappeared for a moment forcing an a capella style performance – these seasoned pros are not without technical brilliance. Tattersall’s melodic riffs, guitar solos and fast-paced finger-pickings are faultless and serve as perfect symmetry to his words.
On 2009’s ’Sweetheart’ we also hear the mandolin (aptly nicknamed the “Frandolin” because it’s played by bassist Franic Rozycki) accompanying the heartfelt lyrics: “I will rustle your lashes loose after we have travelled, like the leaves from the trees when autumn unravels”.
The mandolin featured again on what Tattersall calls “a depressing waltz”, aka new album track ‘Hot Rain Riding On The Salt Lake’, with Helm and Beauchamp providing backing vocals. “The new album’s had rave reviews,” they tell us. “Well, maybe not rave, but better than lukewarm.”
The folky interlude was succeeded by ‘Tiny Craters In The Sand’, with crescendoing guitar and drum solos. When the band lets the crowd choose the next track, the unanimous Brighton cheers are for ‘Long Black Cars’ and ‘Spaghetti’. They obligingly finish with both, then return to rapturous applause with an encore of ‘Better To Have Loved’. “My body is a broken TV, endlessly playing the flickering picture of the boy I used to be,” is exemplary of Tattersall’s lyrics, and perhaps an example of why The Guardian has made comparisons to Morrissey.
Whether underrated or just underground, The Wave Pictures seem to be defying the mainstream in favour of small intimate venues and cult indie-band status. And with friends and collaborators such as Billy Childish, Jeffrey Lewis and Herman Dune (who tonight features proudly on Tattersall’s T-Shirt), who’s to argue?
Green Door Store, Thursday 18th February 2016
Words and photos by Francesca Moore
