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.

THE WAVE PICTURES - Susan Rode The Cyclone

1. KITTENS

2. I SHALL BE A DITCHDIGGER

3. SWEETHEART

4. CINNAMON BABY

5. THROWING WORDS

6. I JUST WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND

7. BLIND DRUNK

8. MARIE AGAIN

9. SUSAN RODE THE CYCLONE

10. AMERICAN BOOM

All songs written by David Tattersall

Performed by David Tattersall, Jonny Helm and Franic Rozycki

With Darren Hayman, Nina Garthwaite, Rebecca Taylor and Simon Trought

Recorded by Simon Trought at Soup Studio,

Hanbury Street, London

Photographs by Clemence Freschard

Released on April 13th 2010, in Spain on Acuarela Records, Germany by Little Teddy Records and Italy by Interbang Records, on VINYL ONLY

Catalogue number: IBR002

THE WAVE PICTURES - If You Leave It Alone

1. If You Leave It Alone

2. Canary Wharf

3. My Kiss

4. I Thought Of You Again

5. Tiny Craters In The Sand

6. Bumble Bee

7. Come On Daniel

8. Too Many Questions

9. Bye Bye Bubble Belly

10. Softly You, Softly Me

11. Strawberry Cables

12. Nothing Can Change This Love

Songs written by David Tattersall except 12. by Sam Cooke

Played by The Wave Pictures with Stanley Brinks, Clemence Freschard, Toby Goodshank and Isabel Martin

Recorded by Clemence Freschard in Berlin in June 2008

Released on Moshi Moshi Records, May 4th 2009

Catalogue number: moshicd26 and moshilp26

DAVID TATTERSALL’S TRACK BY TRACK

'If You Leave It Alone'

The title track is also the first track, and it’s a good, long, sad song in which, amongst other things, I describe the contents of my fridge.

'Canary Wharf'

I once went and sat in Canary Wharf underneath the big screen with the stocks and shares on it, and made notes. A simple, little two-chord minor key song. . It’s almost more of a doodle than a song, Toby Goodshank is a special guest on this recording; his harmony vocal part makes the chorus seem more like a chorus, which makes the song seem more like a song.

'My Kiss'

This is a re-recording of an ancient Wave Pictures song. I really love this song. I think it ought to be really famous and popular, but I suspect it won’t happen.

'I Thought Of You Again'

A true, long song about a far away friend, which I wrote when we were on tour in Spain and then Sweden. I wrote loads of rubbish, anything that popped into my head, on serviettes that I had taken from gas stations. We had these really long van rides on that tour. Anyway, when I got back to London I edited them down to make a song.

'Tiny Creatures In The Sand'

The idea of this song is that it is impossible to be in a long-term monogamous relationship without going insane, no matter how much love you start out with. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with that idea… It’s a kind of a marriage proposal song. It’s quite romantic! Let’s go crazy together!

'Bumble Bee'

A song about depression or about not wanting to get out of bed. It is a re-write of an old folk song called ‘’Froggy Went A Courtin’’. It is deceptively happy sounding. It has some friendly animals in it who offer advice and criticism.

'Come On Daniel'

I have no idea what is going on here, I can’t remember writing this. When I hear it, I quite like it, but it’s more like listening to some other band…

'Too Many Questions'

One of two songs on the album that are written in the first person as someone else... They probably don’t know about this song… Anyway, I’m singing this song as a girl to tell you the truth. When my parents saw me sing this in concert, they thought that I had come out of the closet live on stage.

'Bye Bye Bubble Belly'

The chorus and title come from an advert for a type of yoghurt which is meant to relieve middle-aged women of their constipation. The rest of it is completely made up.

'Softly You, Softly Me'

This song is very sad to me. I was trying to write an early 60s type Bob Dylan song, but found it quite hard to do. I ended up with this though, so it wasn’t a wasted afternoon. I love the sound Clemence Freschard got on this one, all the little picky, percussive things. This album owes everything to her.

'Strawberry Cables'

This is also very sad. Nice horns by Stanley Brinks. One of the key influences on the horn arrangements for this album was a Lou Reed song called ’New York City Man’. It’s from one of my favourite Lou Reed albums, ’Set The Twilight Reeling’.

'Nothing Can Change This Love'

It’s nice to do a cover every now and then. Sam Cooke songs are very satisfying to play. So simple and elegant. It’s a nice little goodbye for the album.

THE WAVE PICTURES - Instant Coffee Baby

1. Leave The Scene Behind

2. I Love You Like A Madman

3. We Come ALive

4. Kiss Me

5. Instant Coffee Baby

6. Avocado Baby

7. Friday Night In Loughborough

8. Holding Hands (Vinyl only track)

9. Red Wine Teeth

10. Strange Fruit For David

11. Just Like A Drummer

12. I Remembered

13. January And December

14. Cassius Clay

Songs written by David Tattersall except 14. by David Tattersall, David Ivar Herman Dune and Toby Goodshank

Played by The Wave Pictures with Lisa Li Lund, Darren Hayman, Simon Trought, Mark Crown, Mathew Benson and Aki Päivärinne

Recorded by Simon Trought at Soup Studio

CD Released on Moshi Moshi, 21 Apr 2008

LP Released on Little Teddy Recordings, November 2008

Dave Tattersall (lead singer, guitarist) sat down and wrote at length his thoughts on the classic that is Instant Coffee Baby .

LEAVE THE SCENE BEHIND
“We wanted to copy the cyclical minor key riff style songs of early Dire Straits, but obviously in our usual garage-y way. We even copied the faded-in intro of their ‘’Down To The Waterline’’, but with wammy bar backwards guitar. Backwards guitar is always fun. We like songs in the key of E minor, songs which have a simple blues type structure and songs with ripping bass and electric guitar solos. We tried to put all those things into ‘’Leave The Scene Behind’’. We recorded it live, then overdubbed only that backwards guitar and Franic’s [bass] and Jonny’s [drums] backing vocals, so this gives a good impression of what we sound like live. Lyrically, the song elaborates on a fairly bland conversation I once had. The fiction is that the incident was dramatic and led to some kind of break up. We have always felt uncomfortable with other people’s desires to label us as belonging to some or other ‘scene’. Scenes are generally to be avoided. We love playing with other bands and musicians, but we were born out of the complete isolation of coming from a village in which there were no other bands, rather than a city band that come to exist through a scene. Consequently we have always been suspicious of scenes. Plus, they always seem to have more to do with clothes than music, and seem built to restrict the amount of different kinds of music you are supposed to admit to liking. They are also obsessed with the new. The new is valued above the special. So there is a certain pleasure in singing ‘’Leave The Scene Behind’’. I don’t have anything specific in mind though.

I LOVE YOU LIKE A MADMAN
“Written on Christmas day, which is when this song is set. It’s a very sad song to me, but musically it’s a bit of a party number, which is a clashing combination that I like: there’s nothing sadder than a sad clown. For the first and possibly the last time, The Wave Pictures have a horn section. Darren Hayman conducted them through the Studio’s glass window from the control booth. We were recorded live and did this in one take. I like the riff. It’s the kind of soul riff that indie bands play, rather than anything a soul band would do. I remember that I wrote the song on Christmas morning in about five minutes, but then spent Christmas afternoon fiddling around with just the middle section for about three hours. It was five minutes for everything else, then three hours on the four line middle section. Like most people, I find Christmas a very sad time of the year. I wish it didn’t exist.

WE COME ALIVE
“Simon Trought, the producer man, came round to out flat once and we listened to African pop together, things like the Bhundu Boys and the Four Brothers, with their gorgeous chiming guitars. He thought this sounded like them. We never thought about it, but I liked the comparison very much. It’s a sort of Jonathan Richman, Violent Femmes style doo-woppy thing. The story in the lyrics is completely made up, and I even sing that in the song, so no one can accuse me of not being honest.

KISS ME
“This is us live with me playing the ukulele instead of the guitar. It’s in F sharp minor, which is almost as good as E minor. It’s a true story more or less: a girl that I liked at school wrote me a letter on pink paper, but all about her love for John Lennon and not me. It pissed me off a bit at the time. I don’t still hold it against John Lennon. It’s fun to sing songs you wrote when you were 17 and stupid, though. I put some lyrics in from blues songs that I liked, ‘’Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor’’ by Mississippi John Hurt is in there. I think I thought this would give strength to the idea that there is life outside the Beatles. It’s hard to say what I thought. It’s very old. This song has become more of an excuse to do solos and rock out than anything else. Also, it only has three chords, so it’s hard for us to make a mistake. Most bands have a song of this nature in their repertoire.

INSTANT COFFEE BABY
“This is our ‘’Born To Run’’! It has the epic quality of Bruce Springsteen, but it’s set in the tiny humdrum world of the Midlands village. It’s probably my favourite thing on the album. It’s got one of the best guitar solos on the record and some good handclaps and I’m not embarrassed by too many of the words. Lyrically, it’s a sort of collage of different memories and different people, but it’s all bolted together in such a way as to sound like one story about one guy and one girl. It’s funny how that happens. It’s similar to the way that your sleeping brain will bolt together different things from your day to make one story in a dream, but it’s a story that has no beginning and no end and doesn’t really make sense all the way through. It can never be fully understood and it isn’t even worth trying.

AVOCADO BABY
“I thought that everyone knew about the Avocado Baby. It’s a story my parents read to me as a child. It’s a sort of proto Home Alone. The baby is fed avocados and becomes very strong, so he is able to defeat some burglars when his parents are out of the house. It turns out that no one knows that story, but it doesn’t seem to stop people liking this song. It has two cowbells on it, which is always a good sign. One of the pleasures of recording a band live is that accidental surprises can occur. On this, Franic goes for a bass guitar solo at the same moment that I go for a guitar solo. We both go for the same notes too. It sounds very practised, but it has never happened before or since. It sounds good to me anyway, a glorious mistake. This also has a good jumpy quality because a couple of bars are missing from an otherwise standard chord sequence during the verses. Also, I love avocados.

FRIDAY NIGHT IN LOUGHBOROUGH
“Loughborough is looking up a bit these days. They’ve spruced up the town centre and all that. But when I was growing up it was a complete dump. It was also the nearest town to Wymeswold, the village that Franic and I grew up in. It was where we used to get drunk when we were teenagers. I used to buy all my records in the now sadly closed Left Legged Pineapple. I first went to the cinema there: the Curzon, as in the song, which has changed its name now. It was the first place I was allowed to go without my parents, the first place I kissed a girl, the first place I had a job etc etc. It isn’t worth anything, it’s a complete nothing place, it just happens to be that place in the fairly dull story of my life. I actually hate it there, like the song suggests, and am glad I never have to go there anymore. I really did get in a fight with a marine, and everybody I know from back home has puked up in various bits of Loughborough at various times. All the place names are true. This song was written in less time than it takes to play. It’s all very very simple. It’s quite a popular one, which is always hard to understand because it came so easily compared with lots of songs that I wrote that nobody likes. I find it funny anyway.

RED WINE TEETH
“A straight forward break-up/alcoholism/blow job story in waltz time. I play piano on this, which was fun. The first chord sequence I had for these lyrics was actually laughed at by Franic and Jonny, so I had to go away and find a different one. It’s a good example of the band saving the day. I would be totally rubbish without the two of them. Still, I was very indignant and pissed off at the time. I enjoy singing the names of all the games. Everybody knows sardines and charades, but I should explain that sleeping bag is a game I used to play as a child. It was like blind man’s bluff, except instead of just wearing a blindfold you had to climb head first into a sleeping bag and then stumble around in that trying to grab your friends. Unsurprisingly, it really stinks of feet in the feet end of a sleeping bag. This is The Wave Pictures attempt at a country song in the style of Townes Van Zandt, but Jonny’s high harmony vocal makes the whole thing sound rather more like ‘’Back for Good’’ by Take That.

STRANGE FRUIT FOR DAVID
“This is very popular and always fun to play. The lyrics are complete nonsense to me but the funny thing is that of all the songs I’ve written this seems to be the one that people think about the most. I’ve heard so many different explanations of what I might be on about. I always tell people they are right. Either all of the explanations are right or none of them are. My favourite thing about this particular recording is the violin playing of Dan Mayfield. He did it in one take having never heard the song before in his life. He really is a special musician.

JUST LIKE A DRUMMER
“Drummers always seem to sleep very well. I think they have less on their minds. I wanted to introduce the expression ‘’to sleep like a drummer’’ into the English language. It’s much more accurate than ‘’to sleep like a baby’’. Everyone knows that babies wake up all the time crying, but drummers sleep soundly through the night. They can fall asleep instantly on public transport or in noisy bars. Jonny Helm can even sleep standing up. I saw him do it once in an airport.

I REMEMBERED
“I just wanted that rhythm on a song on the album. Lyrically it’s the story of a moment of drunken madness that finds the narrator writing a person’s name down over and over again, frantically, for absolutely no reason. It never happened to me, I’m not really a doodler or a scribbler. I like the bongos and the ukulele and all the singing on this one. It’s very much in the style of Herman Dune, probably the most important band to me that I have ever worked with.

JANUARY AND DECEMBER
“This is a duet with Lisa Li Lund. She thinks the lyrics are very filthy but I plead innocence. Her singing is great on this. Like most of the best recordings we have ever made, this take was spontaneous, recorded whilst we were warming up. It was just lucky Simon had the tape rolling. Lisa came in later and did her vocal part beautifully.

CASSIUS CLAY
“Some more nonsense, this one co-written with Toby Goodshank and David-Ivar Herman Dune. It’s a drunk party song, and we were drunk and having a party in the studio when we recorded it. We badgered Simon into playing guitar with us. I’m playing the ukulele. It’s a really nice way to leave the album. It’s nice to say goodbye smiling for once. I stole the line ‘’fantastic to feel beautiful again’’ from Tracy Emin. She has a piece that is just that sentence as a neon sign. It was lovely to me when I saw it. I hope she takes it as a compliment. I wish that everyone could have seen Jonny dancing around the studio to this when we were listening back. He’s one of the world’s greatest dancers.