The Wave Pictures - Beer In The Breakers

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m going to lay my cards out on the table straight away – I bloody love the Wave Pictures. ‘Instant Coffee Baby’ still finds it’s way on to my stereo on regular intervals, three years after it’s release, a claim only a few records can make. I’ve seen them live more times than is strictly legal or sensible. When I finally get around to growing up, I want to be David Tattersall. I want to notice the small nuances of life, and turn them into poetry. I want to be able to insert a bass solo, (bass solo!) into a song about kissing in the sea, without irony. I want to spit the word ‘Devon’ out like a profanity. I want to play harmonica.

Because Dave and his Wave Pictures, they get to do all those things, on ‘Beer in the Breakers’, their third full album on Moshi Moshi, but their thousandth record if you count all the self released Eps and albums prior to inking that deal. Recorded at friend and producer Darren Hayman’s East London abode in just a day and a half, and with strict instructions that there were to be no overdubs, it’s the sound of a band comfortable in their own skin, and it’s somehow richer and fuller for it.

As ever, it’s Tattersall’s lyrics that drive the album, building evocative images of seascapes and beauty found in the broken and ignored; discarded bonfires, sunglasses missing a lens, small vases of dead flowers in a bar. Obviously he puts it better than that, but that’s the point, I will never be a Wave Picture. Musically, lead single ‘Little Surprise’ obstinately defies it’s subject matter, it’s the sound of an argument being played out to an upbeat backing track. ‘Who are you, to tell me that I look depressed? You wouldn’t know me when I’m at my best’, intones Tattersall, whilst jaunty guitar, bass and tripping drums skip happily along in the background. Album opener, ‘Blue Harbour’, exemplifies the down to earth romanticism that ought to be trademarked by the band, somehow turning the simple act of stuffing your wallet into your shoe and going for a swim with a girl you like, into something utterly beautiful, without going all Mills and Boon on us (although initially mishearing the word ‘kissed’ as ‘pissed’ during the line ‘we kissed in the sea’, well that made it about something else entirely).

But it’s not all fun and frolics in the sand, and on tracks like ‘Walk The Backstairs Quiet’, The Wave Pictures prove they can do pathos as just as sublimely. And as if to rub it in, that us mere mortals will never be a Wave Picture, they’ve even dedicated a song to ex band member, the Pete Best of the band if you will, ‘China Whale Brand (For Hugh John Noble)’. The effect is rendered complete by not one, but two guitar solos that demonstrate exactly what a technical virtuoso Tattersall really is.

Unfortunately, it’s those exuberant solos that are most likely to attract criticism, there is not a track that goes by without at least one, and to those with heightened indie sensibilities, it may appear a touch self indulgent. They confuse the listener to some extent, lyrically they’re a bewitching force to be reckoned with, complete with a poetry book that the Mountain Goats, were they quintessentially English, would be proud of. But musically, The Wave Pictures are clearly pupils of the school of Classic Rock. And whilst this should be perceived as a strength, setting The Wave Pictures apart from their contemporaries, proving that they’re genuinely good musicians, it could be a cause for concern from some quarters of their potential audience. If being musically proficient is somehow vulgar, then The Wave Pictures are positively obscene, and to these ears, all the better for it.