Another interview about favourite records

There's a nice little article here: http://stereosubversion.com/artistic-taste-the-wave-pictures and cut n pasted below where Tattersall shares some of his musical tastes once more. This press is ahead of a brief U.S. jaunt which the WP's will embark upon in August.

David Tattersal wants to be clear that he never, ever utilizes the mainstream marketplace to find something new. Word-of-mouth recommendations are the methods du jour, and the results are favorite albums from Ry Cooder and Captain Beefheart. Thus the vocalist for The Wave Pictures has a feel for what matters regardless of what popular culture is pointing toward, and that theme is exhibited in his UK trio. While they had a solid run at SxSW, they’re still waiting to break Stateside. Until then, here’s insight into vocalist Tattersal’s Artistic Taste.

What was the first album you discovered without the assistance of popular radio or television?

Ry Cooder, The Long Riders Original Soundtrack

I was pretty hooked on my dad’s small vinyl collection from quite a young age. I think I was six or seven when I started asking him to

play this one over and over, possibly driving him crazy. I think I liked it because it has cowboys on the front cover. It also has David

Lindley and, of course, Ry Cooder, playing on it: two wonderful musicians.

In my memory (which, admittedly, is pretty suspect) I remember this as the first album that I ever got excited about, or was even aware of. It had a brown cover. I remember looking through all the records to find one with a brown spine. I don’t think I saw the film until I was in my mid-20s. It’s a good one, a typical Walter Hill film. Lots of slow motion gun fights and that sort of thing. Ry Cooder has always been good at breathing new life into old musical forms, something that almost nobody else does convincingly. On this, they play a lot of very old american folk music, but it sounds completely alive and fun.

One thing I would add is this: I never discover any music with the assistance of popular radio or television. Those, to me, are useless places to learn anything, because they are utterly driven by the marketplace. I hear about things from friends and family and so on, or from reading stuff. Maybe my initial love my dad’s record collection is the reason for this. I learned about music in something of a vacuum, since he had given up buying new music not long after he bought this soundtrack, a few years before I was born.

What album is a favorite for the way it prominently features your instrument of choice?

Robert Johnson, The King Of The Delta Blues, Volumes 1 and 2

My instrument of choice is guitar. I can’t think of more virtuoso guitar playing than that on these recordings. His singing is pretty

otherworldly too. It’s easy to understand why Clapton and Keith Richards and all those people initially assumed there was a second guitarist on these recordings, and why the myth that Johnson sold his soul to the devil in return for being granted super-human musical powers is so well-known. His musicianship, and indeed his lyricism, is untouchable. When I heard this I realized that a guitar could be,  all on its own, a whole universe of expression. I still listen to Johnson all the time and I always hear something new.

What album do you feel like you understand, despite the fact that the vocals are in another language?

The Four Brothers, Bros.

Well, I guess I don’t understand what they are saying. But I definitely understand this music. It’s the happiest music that I can think of. It’s like sunshine. It’s such a joy to listen to this band, to hear the way they play together. I have never heard a single recording they made that I did not enjoy. I really love them. I try to play along with this record all the time on my guitar. I understand the spirit of it. I sort of think everyone in the world would enjoy their music a bit. You’d have to be quite hard-hearted to hate them.

What album is not considered a classic, and you find that mystifying?

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band, Unconditionally Guaranteed

In actual fact, not only is this not considered a classic, but Beefheart fans hate it. It’s thought of as a terrible sell-out record,

which it is in some ways I suppose, and which Beefheart kind of acknowledges by being photographed for the cover clutching huge wads of cash and looking sinisterly pleased with himself. It also didn’t work. He didn’t become a huge commercial star because of this. But he should have done! It’s so much fun!

It’s an awesome rock record. I like Trout Mask Replica and all his weirder stuff too, but it’s not going to stop me enjoying this one in any way. It has such great grooves and hilarious lyrics. Peaches, the last track, is a masterpiece. I quite often DJ songs from this and people always dance to it. Sometimes I think Beefheart fans don’t want people to get into him. They’d rather keep him all to themselves or something. They always dismiss his most easy-to-like stuff. I don’t know. I think this should be considered a classic anyway.

What album is an outlier for you given your usual taste?

Ann Peebles, Tellin’ It

To be honest, I don’t listen to a massive amount of soul. I tend to find a little goes a long way. Especially with 70s soul things. But

lately, I’ve been listening to this album over and over and over again. It’s wonderful. That Hi-records drum sound, and the awesome musicianship of drummer of Mr. Grimes, is so sexy and groovy and cool.

And I love the way she sings. It’s emotional, but she isn’t busting a gut wobbling her vowels all over the place in the preposterous melodramatic style of today’s soul-wannabes. She’s got restraint, and sensitivity. She knows how to put on a brave face, which is the saddest thing of all. And she can be totally powerful too. It’s quite masterful, her singing.

What album has your favorite lyrics?

The Mountain Goats, Sweden

I never fail to be impressed by John Darnielle’s lyrics. Every one paints a perfect little heart breaking situation, in the simplest most

elegant language imaginable. This album is like a greatest hits, as so many Mountain Goats albums are. The first time you hear it you think, ‘This is just some bloke thrashing a guitar into a tape machine.’ But the more you play it, the more little details come out.

Eventually, you are singing along with the whole thing from top to bottom and somehow every song is a smash hit in your little world.

It’s a constant inspiration to me.

What album were you embarrassingly late to discover?

The Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat

I had everything else they’d ever done, and all Lou Reed’s solo albums, but I had avoided this one. I had heard it at people’s houses,

and thought it was just noise, and thought maybe it was Captain Beefheart fan syndrome when Velvets fans said this was their favorite Velvets album: ‘Let’s pick the hardest Velvets album to like and say that’s the best one, and drive away all the fairweather fans.’

Well, I finally got a copy of it, more of less just to complete my collection. And I played it once. And I became hooked. This is now

quite possibly my all time favourite album. For it’s spirit, it’s adventurousness, it’s daring, it’s sense of four people in a room together having fun, for John Cale’s lead vocals, and for two of the greatest rock and roll tracks ever recorded, “I Heard Her Call My Name” and the title track. It’s a crazy masterpiece and I love it to pieces.

The Lobster Boat has docked!

After a brief pause, the collaboration lp from Howard Hughes and David Tattersall has arrived! The Lobster Boat contains 10 songs - 4 co-writes between the two of them, 5 Tattersall originals and one Mountain Goats cover (Waving At You from Nothing For Juice). You can order it here:

http://www.wiaiwya.com/releases.php

Full review to follow soon but it's sounding terrific on first couple of plays. It's not clear who plays what but all the WP's are involved (including former drummer Hugh John Noble) and it marks the return to Soup Studios. Vinyl sounds lovely too! Get it!

New Single!

It appears In Her Kitchen will be the next single, out on 7 inch 22nd August - interestingly on WIAIWYA rather than Moshi Moshi. You can order it here:

http://www.wiaiwya.com/releases.php

It appears rather odd that a different label is putting out the single but it's only fair Tattersall gets a cover after the other two have been hogging the limelight on recent singles. Perhaps this could pave the way for WIAIWYA to put out Beer In The Breakers on vinyl?? Hope springs eternal.....

WP's with D. Hayman

Check out this new video of the WP's recording a song with Rotifer and Allo Darlin for a new space based project


Little Arrow, Little Squirrel from Darren Hayman on Vimeo.

Go here for more details:http://vostok5.tumblr.com/

THE WAVE PICTURES - Beer In The Breakers

1. Blue Harbour

2. Now Your Smile Comes Over In Your Voice

3. Little Surprise

4. Blink Back A Tear

5. Walk The Back Stairs Quiet

6. China Whale Brand

7. Pale Thin Lips

8. In Her Kitchen

9. Two Lemons, One Lime

10. Beer In The Breakers

11. Rain Down

12. Epping Forest

All songs written by David Tattersall

David Tattersall: Guitar, lead vocals and harmonica on ‘Rain Down’

Franic Rozycki: Bass guitar and backing vocals

Jonny Helm: Drums and backing vocals

Recorded on the 13th and 14th of October 2010

Produced by Darren Hayman

Cover image by Nina Garthwaite

Released on Moshi Moshi Records on May 2nd 2011

Catalogue number: moshicd39

Bonus CD (with Record Store Day copies, released April 16^th 2011)

1. Apple Boy

2. Here The Ferries Mooring

3. I Walked Past Them Sleeping

4. One More For The Road, Marianne

5. Underneath The Willow Tree

6. The Worm Inside The Brain

Dave Tattersall’s track by track breakdown of the album

BLUE HARBOUR

Named after Franic Rozycki’s favourite brand of clothing, this song describes a trip to Coney Island, New York, and the start of a love affair. People often want to know if our songs are made-up or autobiographical. The truth is usually that they are a mixture: a little bit of a real life and a lot of fiction. But this is one case where I can say that this song is completely true, that every word of it really happened.

NOW YOUR SMILE COMES OVER IN YOUR VOICE

This is my idea of a quintessential Wave Pictures song in E minor. When I wrote the lyrics I was thinking about a very dear friend of mine, and the way a person lights up when they tell a funny story from the past. Franic Rozycki’s bassline really makes the song, made even better because he pulled it out of thin blue air for this take. I’d rather hear some mistakes and improvisation on a record, just to make it sound lively. Too many bands sound completely dead to me, in a polished way. We wanted to do something in the exact opposite way from all those modern records we don’t like were made.

LITTLE SURPRISE

I wrote these lyrics in a bar in Munich, hungover, first thing in the morning. The lyrics describe a scene involving two people who work there having some kind of squabble. It’s terribly mysterious. One of them has “a little suprise up his sleeve”, but we never find out what it is. I know, of course, but I’m not telling. Musically, Little Surprise is quite at odds with its dark lyrics. I often quite enjoy putting dark or sad lyrics with happy, upbeat music. There is something rich about happy/sad songs.

BLINK BACK A TEAR

This Stanley Brinks’ favourite Wave Pictures song, and one of my favourite too. It is a minor key blues song in the style of Otis Rush, whose “Original Cobra Recordings” is one of The Wave Pictures’ all time favourite albums.

WALK THE BACK STAIRS QUIET

In this song a girlfriend urges her boyfriend to sneak out of the house when she hears her insomniac parents beginning to argue in the kitchen downstairs. This is without question my personal favourite recording on the album. It was originally recorded with our acoustic side-project Dan of Green Gables, but The Wave Pictures version is quite different.

CHINA WHALE BRAND

This is a very old song, reprised here at the behest of Jonny Helm, as a kind of public gift to our good friend Hugh Noble, who used to play drums in The Wave Picture, and remains a massive influence on us. At the end of song, when the whole band chants “give me back my China Whale Brand”, The Wave Pictures manage to somehow sound a bit like The Fall.

PALE THIN LIPS

Like ‘Little Surprise’ this one was written in German, and contains reference to some places there. It has nice soul-y chords and pretty thrilling guitar solo. We were very keen to put more solos on this album than on previous albums. Ever since the band started playing live in London, the guitar solos seem to split opinion more than anything else about the band. I discovered, to my surprise that they are not very fashionable, and that people consider them self-indulgent.

IN HER KITCHEN

This is the album’s other old song. When you hear Beer In The Breakers, you get to hear me covering myself when I was 17, that’s how old I was when I wrote In Her Kitchen.

TWO LEMONS, ONE LIME

I play an acoustic guitar instead of an electric guitar on this song. There’s something very melancholy about this one. It’s set in a bar in Aberystwyth on a rainy day.

BEER IN THE BREAKERS

This is the title track of our album because it seemed to represent what we were trying to do the most clearly. It’s dark and slow, and again a quintessential type of Wave Pictures song. I love the story in this song, it’s happened to me but I don’t remember where. I found a small camp that someone had set up on a very grim stretch of beach. There were beer cans and a long-gone-out fire. It didn’t feel like anyone would have a party there, it felt like a very lonely soul had somehow ended up in that situation alone for a few nights. The feeling always stuck with me, and this song, like many of our songs, is a kind of hazy-memory song. It is, of course, in E minor.

RAIN DOWN

A Velvet Underground-y chugging two chord song, every album should have one. Especially Lou Reed albums. He doesn’t always remember to do it. I don’t know why. He invented it, after all.

EPPING FOREST

This song is a kind of companion song to “I Saw Your Hair Between The Tress”, a song which was on both “Dan of Green Gables” and my solo album “Happy For A While”. Epping Forest fills out a story that started there.

Spanish Interview

The WP's seem to be more popular in Spain than in any other country, or at least they seem to do more press there. Here's a new piece: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/The/Wave/Pictures/Louis/Armstrong/suene/funeral/elpepucul/20110628elpepucul_4/Tes
where Tattersall picks some of his favourite songs. Thanks to google translate we can just about understand what he's getting at..

David Tattersall is an ordinary guy who sings about normal things that happen while you live. The simplicity and the musical quality of his band, The Wave Pictures, I have become a strange phenomenon in the musical. You can tell because they enjoy playing. All the time between the road and studying nonstop. Beer just published in the breakers, a new album with the label Mushi Mushi. Perhaps his most carefully. The band played Friday in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Before, Tattersall Audiomatón is subjected to.The news on other websites• Spanish-language websites• in other languagesThe anthem of my life. Ay, Ay, Ay Antony Santos. Because I really feel what it feels like being me.The best song of all time ... White Light White Heat, The Velvet Underground. Because it has lots of energy. It sounds as if he were going really well.... and worst of all time. Another Way To Die by Jack White and Alicia Keys. Because it has no quality. Neither trapping nor fun. It's pretentious and cynical because that clearly is made for money. Even for the low standard of the songs from James Bond, this is a song very disappointing.The song I would have liked to compose. Eight Pictures of The Go Betweens. Because history has so much mystery, a strange drum solo and a small joke in the lyrics: when is a door not a door? When it's a jar?, Ja, ja, ja ... Influenced me in many ways. I love the minor chords and the voice of Robert Forster.The last song I love it. Brother David, Laurel Aitken. Because it is the last song I heard and loved.The best album of all time. Let It Bleed, The Rolling Stones. Perhaps the contribution of Ry Cooder introduces mandolin on Love in Vain. Or a million other reasons, some sentimental, others only by the brightness and the wave of their recordings at that time.The saddest song. Let Him Roll, Guy Clark. If you listen you'll know why. It's sad, but very uplifting. It's a great story about a man who knew Guy Clark. It is very authentic.The song that I like to sing in the shower. Great Balls Of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis. Actually I do not sing in the shower. Never. I just wash and go. But maybe if I did, sing this! It's a fun song.The most overrated band in history. Pink Floyd. Because they are all bad. Pompous, pretentious, inmusicales. There is nothing worse than a song like Comfortably Numb, which goes beyond and always.The song I want to ring my funeral. Potato Head Blues by Louis Armstrong. Because that might have one of those old-style funerals in New Orleans with a band playing up stuff like this. It would be fun.The best love song. Love Minus Zero / No Limit Bob Dylan. It is very tender and sweet and not at all false. Real seems very genuine and contains details of what you like Bob Dylan. Not object to the person, or declares his love in some way vague. She really likes. And has that chord Lou Reed Sweet Jane then used to create this great effect. And a sweet melody.A song to start a road trip. Mario de Franco and The OK Jazz. You up morale. Makes you feel a little happier for a moment.The last great song for a night of DJ. Lazy Poker Blues, Status Quo. Because it is so sexy rock to slow and boogie.A song to start a revolution. Tutti Frutti, Little Richard. Because it is exciting. And you have to be a little excited to start a revolution

THE WAVE PICTURES - Little Surprise

1. Little Surprise

2. One More For The Road Marianne

Released as download on Moshi Moshi Records, April 18th 2011

Catalogue number: moshi120

Released on 7 inch by Acuarela Records