Back cover!

"I was a beatnik for one week."

http://www.thearkpreston.com/2013-09/interview-the-wave-pictures/

Interview: The Wave Pictures

Interview — By Tom Konstantynowicz on September 23, 2013 1:00 pm

On September 24th, The Wave Pictures return to Preston with worldwide touring experience and a brand new double album called City Forgiveness. Ahead of their show at The New Continental, our writer spoke with the band about their extensive touring, influences, what inspires a double album and much more…

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What’s the new record like and what made you decide to make it a double?

I wrote about forty songs in one insomniac week, after coming home from touring. They just all came pouring out of me. I never experienced anything like it. It’s a stream of consciousness epic! It’s our version of On The Road! And if you believe that you’ll believe anything! I was a beatnik for one week. Then I got a good night’s sleep and it was over.

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The record was written while on tour across America so are we getting a more American sound and loads of American references in the new songs?

The Woods sounds a bit like The Velvet Underground. We’ve always been inspired by American music first and foremost. We listen to the blues, country music, Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Bo Diddley… It has always been where the band is coming from. The Woods is definitely a Velvet Underground thing… you’ve got to love the Velvets!

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You spend a lot of time gigging all over the world, where are your favourite places to play? Are there different reactions in different countries? Is there anywhere you’ve been where they just didn’t get it?

We really enjoy touring Germany. The audiences there are very attentive but also up for having a party, a good time. I like playing anywhere though. I like it even when the audience doesn’t like it, which does happen on occasion.

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You’re known for your witty lyrics and obscure imagery, what makes you happier, someone listening to your songs and having a little chuckle or someone spending an hour thinking about what it all means?

The best thing is when you see someone dancing at a show.

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Where does the song writing inspiration come from? Do you have a favourite lyric of yours?

I’m so thrilled and excited about the new album City Forgiveness. I know that musicians always say that about their new album, but for me it’s our very best work and the best lyrics I have written so far. I don’t know where the inspiration comes from, exactly. We’re very lucky in that we have a lot of very talented friends: Sam James, Stanley Brinks, Jeff Lewis etc etc… To watch these talented people at work is endlessly inspiring. I think a lot of different things inspire me. Films, books, poems, records, and stuff from every day life. It all starts to feed into it. I’m very lucky because I simply enjoy doing it. I’ve never had writer’s block. I’ve never had to work hard at it. I don’t know why.

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Anyone who has typed The Wave Pictures into YouTube will know your videos tend to be quite funny. Do you enjoy the video shooting side of it? What’s the most fun you’ve had on set?

No, to be perfectly honest I hate making music videos. I wish we didn’t have to do it. I don’t watch them, I don’t like being filmed, I don’t like the discipline at all. We tend to try to get someone talented like Darren Hayman to do it for us. He’s very good at making videos. I’m happy to just pass it over to him and take a back seat. Best of all is when I don’t have to appear in the video. I can just watch it when it is finished. In answer to the second part of your question, making videos is not my idea of fun. If you like one of our videos, then all the credit goes to the film-maker, not to me.

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The Wave Pictures have been going for ages now, do you still enjoy it as much as when you started and what’s changed about being in the band since?

I enjoy it more and more actually as time goes on and we get better at what we do.

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Once tipped to make it big you’re now kind of a cult favourite, would you agree? Do you still have ambitions to be more than that?

We’re just enjoying playing music together. I love writing songs and we all love playing together, and talking about music and listening to music. We’re completely addicted. I enjoy every stage of it – the writing, the playing, the recording, the gigs. I feel really lucky because Jonny and Franic are such great musicians and we all get along very well too. We’re very ambitious about the music… we just want to get better and better at what we do. We’ve never had to compromise in any way. We really do things exactly the way we want to do them, with no interference from the outside. Our record label and our friends and family have been completely supportive all the way.

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There’s a tour just on the horizon, what are you guys like on tour? Rock and roll? Or the opposite?

We are wild and crazy guys!

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The Mercury Music Prize nominations are out, what have you been listening to lately? Anything you’d like to see get a nod, or even win?

My favourite new album is Boom Biddy Boom by Freschard.

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With your extensive back catalogue, what can we expect in the set-list?

We change the set list every night. Actually, we don’t use set-lists at all, we just get up there and start playing. We only do the songs that we feel like doing at any given moment. Usually it’s a mix of a few old ones and the stuff from the new album.

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You play at The Continental in Preston which is known for its fine selection of continental beers, what’s your favourite beer? May I recommend the Delerium Tremens and Kwak?

I will have to try those! I guess personally I like to drink lager. I like Red Stripe! Franic is more of a real ale man. Jonny tends to drink red wine usually.

Some new press

Tattersall gives us some record recommendations here:

http://www.cracklefeedback.com/artists/the-wave-pictures/broken-record

And a brief interview here!:

http://shadowplayfanzine.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/interview-mischief-with-allo-darlin.html

The hardest working band in Britain, aka The Wave Pictures, have been firm favourites on this website for pretty much ever. Its great loving a band like this because new material, in one form or another, is never far away. And by this I mean quality releases like Long Black Cars (an album proper) and frontman David Tattersall's second solo album Little Martha, both released in 2012, not put out for the sake of it (in a Ryan Adams kind of way), but for the love of it. 2013 sees them still going strong with a new album, an ingenious "dad rock" video and a substantial UK tour (see below for details). Here, David Tattersall takes time out to talk about his oft-surprising record collection. The new album, City Forgiveness comes out October 21st on the ever reliable Moshi Moshi label.

Under-rated Record

Freschard - Boom Biddy Boom

This album is a masterpiece and since it seems to have slipped out without any reviews, no record-label backing, nothing, i guess it's safe to call it ''under-rated''. I hope that Freschard doesn't remain under-rated because I really love what she is doing. I really like her music.

Favourite Country Album

Buck Owens - The Very Best Of Buck Owens Volume One

This has been one of the records that I have played the most in the last year or so. So many great songs: Under Your Spell Again; Excuse Me (I Think I've Got A Heartache); Act Naturally. And i love the ''Bakersfield Sound'': driving, dry, no frills, twangy guitars. It's glorious, unpretentious, funny, silly, intelligent music.

Favourite Alt-Country Album

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Gilded Palace of Sin

I think this is probably Gram Parson's best work. He's got that mix of being simultaneously down-to-earth and melodramatic that great country music has, that you hear in Johnny Cash and Buck Owens and all the rest. This record has a pleasing crisp sound to it, too. And very good songs, like Sin City. I like his voice, too.

Favourite Jazz Album

Gerry Mulligan Meets Johnny Hodges

This is such a pleasing record to listen to. I'm sure everyone could like this! It's very easy on the ear compared to the east coast stuff from the same period that everyone knows. And they solo beautifully: no one is in a hurry on this record.

Over-rated Record

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

This does nothing for me whatsoever. It's just lift music. Vague sounds. No songs. No soul. I don't understand it at all.

Record of Sin

Dr. Dre - 2001

I really love this! I don't really feel embarrassed. Perhaps I ought to feel embarrassed! Some of the lyrics are not very nice. But it makes me very happy to listen to this and dance around and sing along. It's only got about 4 good songs, but those songs are very good indeed. The Watcher! Still Dre! Just the best grooves in the world!

Joyful Record

Songs Ohia - Axxess and Ace

This record just has so much heart. It's kind of sad music I suppose but it moves me and lifts my spirits. I suppose it just lifts my spirits that someone made something like this once. Great music. Always perks me up.

Record From My Youth

Rory Gallagher - Rory Gallagher

I used to listen to Rory Gallagher all the time when I was younger. I even had a picture of him taped to my guitar amplifier. I learnt a lot about playing the guitar from him. This record is up there with Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere for having just great, raw, no-effects guitar playing. I still like it a lot.

Surprising Record

Veneno - Veneno

Someone described this to me as ''Spain's Marquee Moon''. I'm not sure that quite describes it. It is a cocaine fuelled fusion of flamenco and rock. It's a bit proggy. It's very bouncy. It isn't like anything that I have ever heard. I go back to it every now and then and it sounds completely different to me every time. It is very odd. I'm not sure it's any good. But I like it!

Record That Reminds Me Of...teenage years

Dirty Three - Whatever You Love You Are

This record reminds me of listening to John Peel when I was a teenager. I remember the churning violins of the first track, Some Summers They Drop Like Flies, coming out of the radio. It was dark and intense and slow and very live sounding. It sounded very real. We went to see them at the arts centre in Leicester. We were very little. They were extraordinary. Almost scary. A great band! 

Interview: Mischief with Allo Darlin' inspires new Wave Pictures record

A tour with indie pop stars Allo Darlin' has inspired The Wave Pictures' new album City Forgiveness. ShadowPlay caught up with frontman David Tattersall to discuss the album and the band's future.

If a decade of being told his voice is a dead ringer for Modern Lovers singer Jonathan Richman is wearing, then Wave Pictures frontman David Tattersall doesn't show it. The likeable songwriter cites Richman's 2008 album 'Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild' as a key influence to new album City Forgiveness, along with Rory Gallagher, Neil Young and rumba singer Franco and the OK Jazz.

 David Tattersall

But there's one key influence on the latest LP from the prolific trio - Allo Darlin'. The Fortuna Pop outfit accompanied the Wave Pictures on a six week tour of the US last year and double album City Forgiveness is the result of the trip. "The best thing about that tour was that we all became friends. The highs would be hanging out and drinking tequila and playing frisbee. The lows would be driving nine hours a day in the hot sun," Tattersall explains.

Release on hip London label Moshi Moshi on October 21, the record will be eagerly anticipated by the band's unique and oft-obsessive fan base. "We think it's the best thing we've ever done! We're very happy with it," explains Tattersall. "We have great special guests on there: Paul Rains from Allo Darlin, Stanley Brinks and others. And we've got a deep, rich sound that we never had before. The album has more tones and colours than on our previous efforts, more life, more energy."

If single The Woods is a marker than that description is more than accurate. A live version of the track recorded seminal east London studio Toe Rag shows Tattersall's trademark off beat lyrics ("I have unattractive nurses in my dreams/ stacked  low like pancakes") married to an infectious relentless dirty rhythm to give a performance as good as any the band have ever put in. 

"It was really really fun," Tattersall says of the Toe Rag session. "We certainly enjoyed the analogue aspect of the studio, the absence of a computer was delightful. I don't like computers much to be honest and I try to avoid them for the most part."

New album City Forgiveness

Formed in the East Midlands in the late 1990s, The Wave Pictures - Tattersall, bassist Franic Rozycki and Jonny Helm - have progressed to become royalty in the anti-folk scened finding fans and collaborators in comic supremo Jeffrey Lewis, Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle and Swedish folk legends Herman Dune among others. 

"We've been lucky right from the start with all the wonderful people that we have worked with. I remember hearing Jeff Lewis on John Peel when I was a teenager living in the East Midlands at my parents house," says Tattersall. "I thought his songs were incredible then and I still do now, and we've been friends for ten years and Franic played mandolin on his last album.

"I was uplifted by playing with Daniel Johnston: his songs really cheered me up and made me happy."

The Wave Pictures are one of the hardest working bands in the UK and their staggeringly prolific output has seen the trio release approaching 20 albums as well as solo projects and spin offs. Their tales of marmalade statues and avocado babies have combined with electric tunes like Jimmy Reed and Just Like a Drummer to retain a buzz around the band. Regular tours around the UK, US and Paris include headline slots in New York, a forthcoming gig at the Jazz Cafe in Camden on November 13 and the band even played ShadowPlay's first gig on a snowy night in Sheffield in 2006.

But does the relentless recording and touring ever get too much? "It certainly can be a struggle at times. But we've stayed true to the way we think things should be done. And so we're happy and enjoy what we're doing," Tattersall says.

"Nevertheless, we travel a lot and work hard and it can be a struggle to deal with all the opinions and criticisms that you get and all the indifference too, and all the while you know that the last thing the world needs is another band. 

He adds: "But the secret, I suppose, is to focus on the job at hand and try to disregard everything else that goes along with it. We get along with each other, and we love music, and that helps a lot."

Conviviality then, may be the key, but a heap of energy and a fistful of inventive tunes will doubtless keep the Wave Pictures on top too.

Lisbon and Album Tracklist

The Darren Hayman directed video for "first single" Lisbon was released this week. It's not clear if there will be an actual single with b-sides or if it's just a track released to radio. Bit of an odd choice of song? You decide!



The following tracklist seems to have appeared online as well. Not entirely sure why the second CD would be listed first but judging by some familiar titles this seems to be a genuine tracklist. 6 weeks or so to go!

CD2

1. Tropic
2. The Inattentive Reader
3. Shell
4. The Ropes
5. Narrow Lane
6. Atlanta
7. New Skin
8. A Crack In The Plans
9. Golden Syrup
10. Like Smoke

CD1

1. All My Friends
2. Before This Day
3. Chestnut
4. Better To Have Loved
5. Missoula
6. Lisbon
7. Red Cloud Road (Part 2)
8. The Woods
9. Whisky Bay
10. The Yellow Roses

Toerag Part 2: The Ropes

October 21st!

The Wave Pictures have announced today that they will release their brand new album called City Forgiveness on 21st October 2013!

Borne from 6 weeks driving around America in a small van on tour with Allo Darlin', the result of this trip is their fifth studio album.
"We visited Hank Williams' house and Billy The Kid's grave, watched the Golden Gate bridge disappear into the clouds, and had our frisbee confiscated by a cop. We played some great shows together, and we became good friends, and we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove" explains vocalist and lyricist Dave Tattersall. Whilst they drove Tattersall scribbled in a notebook - "anything that popped into my head" and on his return found "a few hundred crumpled well-travelled pages in at the bottom of my bag."
Ten years after The White Stripes recorded Elephant at the hallowed studio, The Wave Pictures took a trip to Toe Rag to record this exclusive footage of The Woods, taken from City Forgiveness:
They play a full UK tour in celebration of the release in September:



SEPTEMBER
11 - Cambridge (Portland Arms) [Tickets]
12 - Cardiff (Full Moon Club) [Tickets]
13 - Nottingham (Spanky Van Dykes) [Tickets]
14 - Festival No. 6 [Tickets]
15 - Bristol (Louisiana) [Tickets]
18 - Leicester (The Musician) [Tickets]
19 - Liverpool (Kazimier) [Tickets]
20 - Edinburgh (The Pleasance Theatre)
21 - Aberdeen (Snafu)
22 - Glasgow (Mono)
23 - Newcastle (The Cluny) [Tickets]
24 - Preston (The Continental) [Tickets]
25 - Hull (The Adelphi)
26 - Leeds (Brudenell Social Club) [Tickets]
27 - Manchester (Soup Kitchen) [Tickets]
28 - Brighton (The Haunt) [Tickets]
NOVEMBER
13 - London (Jazz Cafe) [Tickets]
www.thewavepictures.com
www.facebook.com/thewavepictures
www.youtube.com/thewavepicturesmusic
@thewavepictures

Indietracks Interview 2013

 http://indietracksblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/indietracks-interview-27-wave-pictures.html

Indietracks interview #27: The Wave Pictures

Interview by Gareth Ware

Prolific, lyrically vivid and packing, in David Tattersall a truckload of awesome guitar solos to boot, The Wave Pictures are making their first venture to Ripley's fair climes since 2008, which coincided with the release of acclaimed second 'proper' album 'Instant Coffee Baby'. With much having changed since – including the record or two released in the meantime – David Tattersall kindly took the time to talk about their return and their imminent new double album.

Having last played Indietracks way back in 2008, are you excited at returning and seeing how the festival has developed?
Yes I am, though I hope it hasn't changed too much. It has always had such a nice atmosphere.

How do you think you've developed as musicians, songwriters and performers in the time between visits?
I think we have improved tremendously!

What can you tell us about your new record, which comes out in the autumn? With it being a double, were there new challenges in making it compared to a standard, single-disc album?
We travelled around America for six weeks, crammed in a van with Allo Darlin', and I wrote lyrics in a notebook to pass the time on the long drives. When I got home to London, I was pretty jet lagged and confused; I didn't sleep properly for about a month. All I could do was write songs. It was a strange time in many ways, I felt like a ghost but the songs just poured out of me. I could just pick up the notebook, look at something I had written in it whilst travelling around, and make a song up instantaneously. It was very exciting. It was this strange and unusual time that necessitated doing a double album. I didn't decide to make a double and then set about writing it. I think I wrote about fifty songs in a week. It had to be a double! But, we cut it down to the best twenty tracks. Or what seemed the best at the time. The title came to me in a dream, and since nothing useful ever came to me in a dream before, I thought we should use it. The album will be called City Forgiveness.

Having done both EPs and now a double alongside the standard album format, which do you think offers the greatest writing challenge - the need to get a message across concisely on an EP or maintaining a sense of cohesion over a double?
There are no challenges really on the writing side. You just write songs and you put a small number of them on an EP and more on an album and twice as many again to make a double album! I like double albums a lot, as a music fan. Lubbock (on everything) by Terry Allen, Trout Mask Replica, Blonde on Blonde... there are some good double albums knocking around!

The question on everyone's lips will no doubt be: will it contain mentions of fruit? Can you please confirm or deny this fact?
I definitely got some food and drink in there somewhere. I had genuinely no idea that I wrote about fruit often until it was pointed out to me. It is funny because I did it lots of times without thinking about it, but now I am quite self-conscious of it. So there might be no fruit on the new album.

Speaking of lyrics, you've always had this way with vivid imagery reminiscent of Jonathan Richman et al - where does the inspiration for them come from?
I think that the truth is that after a while you just start to think in the form of song lyrics. You walk down the street and lines start to form in your mind that sound like song lines. It happens to me that way. Certain conditions are also strangely helpful to songwriting. I often write a song if I haven't slept well or if I am hungover: I do not know why!

When I was younger I would turn to writers to kick-start my brain. I took many many lines out of Raymond Chandler novels. I stole freely from Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller and Jim Thompson and Carson McCullers. I still do this occasionally, but it is pretty rare for me to use someone else's line these days. Generally the lyrics just pop into my mind and then it is a matter of editing.

So - I guess the answer is that, after a while, the songs just inspire themselves! They start writing themselves. I do it just for pleasure, and it comes quite easily to me now, which is not to say that I don't wish I was better at it. Often, I cringe with embarrassment at my own songs. But, as long as I enjoy myself, I will keep doing it.

What does the rest of 2013 hold for you and what are you most looking forward to?
I am most looking forward to working with Howard Hughes again - doing some writing and recording for another Lobster Boat album with him. That should be fun.

What are you most looking forward to seeing and/or doing at the festival? Is there anyone in particular you're particularly excited to see?
I am excited to see my parents. They should be coming along, since they live quite near to the festival. I hope so anyway. I have always enjoyed just being at the festival with them, and seeing friends play. It is such a nice relaxing festival; one of the only ones I enjoy being at.

If I am able to be there, I will watch the Pastels. I love their music. Do you know the recording of This Could Be The Night by Jad Fair and the Pastels? That's one of the best records I can think of.