The Wave Pictures + Seazoo / Soup Kitchen, Mcr / Fri 1 Feb

The Wave Pictures return with the promised second album of the
year, Look Inside Your Heart – a warm, joyous record celebrating
friendship, happiness and drunken party times. Like the first album they
released this year, the more contemplative Brushes With Happiness, this
one was recorded late at night whilst inebriated back at the tiny Booze
Cube Studio in Stoke Newington, live to reel-to-reel tape with no
computers of any kind. The album is peppered with giggles and chatter,
which adds a sense of spontaneity and place.

As singer and
guitarist Dave Tattersall explains: ‘Look Inside Your Heart is intended
as a rallying cry in the war against the machines; while a computer may
have beaten world-champion human being Lee Sedol at Go, a machine could
never have made music as joyful, spontaneous, happy, poetic, broken and
rambunctious as this. Look Inside Your Heart is a bullet in the face of
all pop-poseurs and robot wannabes, a die-hard continuation of the
vulnerable rebel tradition of rock and roll music, a vibrant work of
outsider art and a masterpiece of electric folk.’

Twenty years
after forming in Wymeswold, Leicestershire as teenagers, The Wave
Pictures have gone on to be one of the UK’s most prolific and beloved
bands. Fond of classic rock, jazz and blues, they are also one of the
most accomplished, with Tattersall’s guitar solos becoming the stuff of
legend. They have collaborated with varying bright stars of the musical
firmament, such as last year’s rock’n’roll surf-garage-rock project with
Charles Watson from Slow Club, as new band The Surfing Magazines, or
their ongoing partnership with ex-Herman Dune member Stanley Brinks, or
the very close partnership with Billy Childish for 2015’s Great Big
Flamingo Burning Moon.

They first experimented with recording an
album all in one go, straight to tape with 2016’s acoustic A Season In
Hull. They took the concept further with Brushes With Happiness, making
sure that it was a magical album that was completely improvised, with no
songs written in advance echoing the jazz and blues recordings that
they admire.

For Look Inside Your Heart, they tap in to a rich
and varied musical palette, with opening track Roosevelt Skyes named as a
tribute to the great piano bluesman, an African pop party in the vein
of The Four Brothers and The Bhundu Boys. Whilst House By The Beach is a
love song intended for the young Elvis Presley to cover in an alternate
universe, with a familiar 50s call and response chorus.

Shelly
features guest vocals from Holly Holden from Holly Holden y Su Banda,
which is a love song in the laid back style of early 70s Grateful Dead.
Dodge City Blues uses the words from a beatnik prose poem from the mind
of Sam James, as Tattersall explains; ‘the greatest singer-songwriter in
New York City, a mysteriously neglected individual possessed of free
flowing genius’.

Further wearing their influences on their
sleeves but giving them a very distinctive Wave Pictures spin, Hazy Moon
sounds like Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones with Tom Verlaine
on lead vocals, whereas Close Your Eyes Mike recalls Highway 61
Revisited-era Bob Dylan with Nigel Blackwell from Half Man Half Biscuit
on lead vocals and Tell Me That You Weren’t Alone sounds like Astral
Weeks-era Van Morrison as re-recorded by Jonathan Richman and The Modern
Lovers.

The beloved trio of Jonny Helm (drums), Dave Tattersall
(guitar & vocals) and Franic Rozycki (bass), further demonstrate
their tight bond, weaving effortless melodies with mind bending sonic
and emotional force. Look Inside Your Heart is poignant, witty, wise and
wonderful.

‘Dreamlike, bluesy and unique’ – the Guardian

‘It’s both epic and frivolous, rather like a gravitas-free Bad Seeds’ – Q

Support comes from Seazoo, an act that started out as nothing more than a
bedroom-recording project in 2013. Surprising momentum built, however,
as their Grandaddy/Yo La Tengo/SFA-inspired recordings began to gain
support from the BBC. Huw Stephens, Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, Mark
Radcliffe have all played previous tunes from the Ken, Car Deborah and
JUMBO EPs. Rather excellently, Marc Riley invited them to perform a live
session for his 6 Music show. They accepted, ferociously.

Price: £12.50 adv
Info/tickets: https://www.heymanchester.com/the-wave-pictures-13