The Wave Pictures

There's not much middle ground with anti-folk - you either find the existential narratives and gentle melodies comforting or obnoxious. With this in mind, Wave Pictures' fourth studio album will either seem comically delicate or self-consciously and annoyingly twee. Of corse, if you believe the latter, it's your loss.

Little has changed since the band's 2011 release "Beer In The Breakers", and although Long Black Cars is more of a heartbreak album, the band's upbeat guise and dry humour is still their delivery method of choice.

The record offers up numerous charming lyrics and hazy rhythms that sounds more like Television Personalities than a gang of New York blues troubadors.

Wave Pictures have a wry intelligence and open warmth that enraptures and engages the listener. - Artrocker

We don't want to do down the achievements of the transatlantic folk communities, but... somehow The Wave Pictures remain relatively unknown. Despite frontman David Tattersall's clear, keening voice, delicately picked guitar work and lazily meandering melodies, the band have yet to capture the public imagination. Especially baffling is how Tattersall's witty, poignant lyrics failed to attract fans of his closest competitor, Morrissey. But it seems The Wave Pictures admittedly plain dress sense and lack of respect for solid genre boundaries have conspired against them.

Frankly this is a crime against music, one of such mindless barbarity that Theresa May, if she knew the first thing about pop, would introduce filling new legislation allowing the police to use water cannon to blast the cloth out of the ears of the nation's fashion-led underclass. - Time Out

http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/albums/the-wave-pictures-beer-in-the-breakers - This Is Fake DIY

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2011/04/the-wave-pictures-beer-in-the-breakers/ - The Line Of Best Fit

http://www.musicomh.com/albums/wave-pictures-5_0411.htm - Music oMH

For bands and artists alike, the magic of the debut album is one that is forever hard to replace. The excitement of seeing your collective efforts finally presented as a finished, single entity for the first time is a justifiably special moment that in theory can’t be replicated.

Erstwhile providers of witty, verbose, quasi-skiffle guitar-pop The Wave Pictures appear to have hit upon the perfect solution to the problem of how to keep that magic alive by simply treating each album as a debut in its own right. This approach has seen the scratchy beginnings on first album proper (countless early CD-Rs were recorded and sold at gigs prior to Sophie’s release) give way to the charmingly lo-fi musings of Instant Coffee Baby (an album which many believe the band have yet to emulate), the wispy folky sounds of If You Leave It Behind, the arguably misfiring Sweetheart EP (a feeling exacerbated when listening to continental Europe only full-length expansion Suzan Rode The Cyclone), and last year’s impressive, rich-sounding, Darren Hayman-engineered Beer In The Breakers.

Enter the group’s New York record, Long Black Cars. The band have taken on production duties themselves this time. Hayman, when questioned on his involvement on the last record last year, commented that frontman David Tattersall didn’t need a producer, so clear was he in his mind as to how he wanted the record to evolve. The record’s overall sound is one that, while production allows the three elements - Tattersall’s guitar, Franic Rosinksi’s bass and Jonny Helm’s drums, augmented by occasional harmonica - room to breathe and demonstrate what intricate and effective interplay between instruments, irrespective of their numbers, can add to the record.

For many Wave Pictures fans, the draw continues to be Tattersall’s fascinating, poetic and unique skills as a lyricist. As he croons early on in stomping opening track Stay Here And Take Care Of The Chickens: "The spool is whirring but the tape has come loose, like a rattlesnake snapping at itself." It’s evident that his skills as a wordsmith are undimmed, and he continues to stake a genuine claim to be one of Britian’s most underrated lyricists. Few people can take an opening line as mundane and unappetising as "The milk bubbled out of the bottle, in clotted lumps of foul cream" and make it work, yet it does when introducing the summery Never Go Home Again.

Elsewhere on the album, the whimsical summer sounds are balanced by sections of the record that could’ve originated Stateside. The mainly instrumental Give Me A Second Chance sounds like a prime slice of Louisiana blues attached to a relentlessly shuffling beat, while Seagulls, with its Duane Eddy aping guitar lines, could be a prime slice of period surf-pop. It also contains another withering Tattersall bridge in "that uniform that you and you and your friends wore embarrassed me more, than anything I’d seen before".

By the time the infectious title track closes the album it's clear that the band can realistically claim to have put together their most consistent package of songs since their rightly acclaimed ‘second’ album Instant Coffee Baby. Whereas previous records have felt disjointed – rushed, even – Long Black Cars retains a common sense of cohesive purpose throughout. With the summer fast approaching, Tattersall and co. may well have delivered an early soundtrack ready made for it. - Music OMH

The Wave Pictures may be on the cusp of a major breakthrough and, like all overnight sensations, it has taken them a long time to get there. This Loughborough three-piece have gigged sporadically over the last decade, yet only now, on the eve of the release of debut album Instant Coffee Baby, are they attracting the kind of attention that means this last night of a four-week London residency is a torturously crammed affair.

Their appeal is not hard to understand. They play charming, witty pop songs shot through with Jonathan Richman's gawky glee and Suede's doomed provincial romanticism. If Jarvis Cocker were to sing with the Modern Lovers, he might produce a song like Leave the Scene Behind, a piquant account of being brusquely rejected by a beautiful social climber.

They are a sharp, imaginative band, but the Wave Pictures are all about guitarist and singer David Tattersall, a waspish naif who wears his heart on his ragged sleeve. They owe a certain debt to the Smiths, and Tattersall has Morrissey's knack of marrying the ridiculous and the sublime in an exquisite, tautly turned phrase: "I've seen you selling shoes, but you've never seen me sing," he sighs on the bathetic but undeniably gorgeous Now You Are Pregnant.

Similarly, We Dress Up Like Snowmen and I Love You Like a Madman are far more poignant than their throwaway titles would imply, and this packed indie sweatbox palpably throbs with enthusiasm. The Wave Pictures will soon be playing far bigger venues than this - it was a privilege to see them here. - The Guardian

At a time when the future of music is a topic that regularly gets picked over by blogs and broadsheets alike, a band like The Wave Pictures can seem pretty old-fashioned. Three disheveled blokes wielding guitar, bass and drums, writing songs laced with kitchen sink drama and seemingly on a constant cycle of touring and releasing records, it can initially be difficult to see why they’ve developed such cult appeal. Surely there’s plenty of bands around that do this kind of thing?

If only. The beauty of The Wave Pictures lies in how they can take such rudimentary ingredients and create something genuinely exciting. This is the band’s third album in as many years, with singer David Tattersall releasing at least two solo albums or collaborations in between. Rather than exposing the limits of their sonic fields though, this proficiency has allowed The Wave Pictures to push and stretch the edges of that traditional three piece line up, seeing just what they can do with the basics. To describe Tattersall as an English Jack White might seem faintly ridiculous, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Long Black Cars follows many of the ideas set out on last year’s Beer In The Breakers, where Tattersall pushed his wig-out guitar skills to the forefront. Here though, the songs are taut and tight rather than languid and laid back. Opener ‘Stay Here And Take Care Of The Chickens’ has a menacing edge that suggests the poultry are being taken care of in a Mafioso sense, helped by a dizzying Dire Straights-esque solo. ‘Spaghetti’, probably the catchiest track on the record, reminds you of when The Coral could write a pop song, and still finds time for a bass solo and an almighty bit of jangle from Tattersall, and all in under four minutes.

There are extra elements added to the basic Wave Pictures template here as well, as they subtly push themselves in some different directions. A wash of harmonica hangs over ‘Hoops’, while ‘My Head Gets Screwed On Tighter Every Year’ is beefed up by some gentle slide guitar. Drummer Jonny Helm even takes the mike on ‘Eskimo Kiss’ and ‘Give Me A Second Chance’ to add variety on the vocal front as well. (Go see the band live if you get chance, just to see Helm perform both the rolling beat and the hollered vocals of the latter).

When it works, Long Black Cars condenses the finest elements of The Wave Pictures into some impressive moments. Tattersall’s insightful, faux-mundane lyrics are always more Alan Bennett than Gallagher brother, and here he seems on particularly inspired form – crooning “maybe a John Wayne movie, maybe Richard and Judy?” when reminiscing about long term unemployment on ‘Come Home Tessa Buckman’.

Occasionally though, there is a feeling that the belt could have been tightened on Long Black Cars as a whole. While there are moments like ‘Spaghetti’ and ‘…Chickens’ that capture the sprightly pop of their early years, there’s none of the languid, Neil Young-esque tracks that made Beer In The Breakers so impressive, and the balance is tipped in the favour of more mid-tempo, considered tracks.

It’s a minor quibble, and one that probably won’t concern many devoted Wave Pictures fans. It’s probably what you expect from a band this prolific, and you know there will probably be an EP, a split 7” or even another album on the way soon. Sometimes, it’s good to know that there’s still bands out there doing this kind of stuff, and doing it so well. - Drowned In Sound