The Wave Pictures - Instant Coffee Baby

In a recent feature here on DIY, The Wave Pictures revealed they were influenced by Springsteen, AC/DC and, according to drummer Jonny ‘Huddersfield’ Helm, themselves. Whilst the first two influences don’t manifest themselves on this, their first long-player on Moshi Moshi, the latter most certainly does. The Wave Pictures seem trapped in their own world of failed relationships, surrealism, stolen coffee machines and nights out in Loughborough. On lead single ‘Strange Fruit Or David’, its title in itself perhaps an allusion to the bizarre imagery enveloped in Dave Tattersall’s lyrics, he croons ‘a sculpture is a sculpture, marmalade is marmalade / but a sculpture of marmalade is a sculpture but it isn’t marmalade’. Er, come again?

Confusing lyrics aside, this album is a slice of lo-fi 50s style Americana (this album largely recorded through live takes on an eight-track recorder) via the mean streets of Bethnal Green where the trio share a flat. Whilst vaguely reminiscent of the looseness of The Coral at times, The Wave Pictures have managed to carve a niche for themselves thanks to their quirky, sometimes ramshackle charm: opener ‘Leave The Scene Behind’ an epitaph to their distinctiveness. Indeed, ‘Friday Night in Loughborough’ is the only nod to a normal existence on this record: the rest a stream of consciousness, a mixture of fleeting memories retold with an charming childlike quality.

They even manage a decent stab at the token slow song, though ‘January And December’, an ode to nights out with loved ones til closing time, is the album’s weak point. Despite this, in ‘Instant Coffee Baby’, The Wave Pictures have created an album that pulls off all the core essentials of a great pop album; quirky, endearing, and catchy in all the right places.