THE WAVE PICTURES | LIVE REVIEW
The Moon Club, Cardiff, Thurs 12 Feb
1998 was great wasn’t it? The World Cup, The Good Friday peace agreements, Google being founded and a president being impeached over a dirty dress. It’s also the year The Wave Pictures formed and it’s where they should have stayed.
The music was dull, almost offensively so: a mindless garage rock offering for men about to hit 40. The guitar work was competent, if highly referential, so while you could say they knew their instruments well, that’s a description normally applied to a covers band, rather than a group who’ve just released their 14th album on respected label Moshi Moshi. The room was full and yes, people were enjoying themselves but a good live atmosphere is no excuse here. You can find good atmosphere at your gran’s birthday party.
Live music should inspire you, make you feel bigger than yourself, but as I watched the band clunk away an evening in support of their new album Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon all I felt was pity. Despite the new songs providing ample space to show off the evident talent of Billy Childish ( who co-wrote and produced the latest album), as the endless ‘choons’ blurred into each other I wondered, had they missed the last 17 years? The music seemed so wilfully ignorant, the group themselves so cheerfully retrograde. Even the onstage banter felt like rejected dialogue from a Guy Ritchie movie. It just all felt so dated. Was this some sort of pre-millennial twilight zone? A world where Damon Albarn is king, Fat Les’ Vindaloo plays on an endless loop and the only thing on TV is Big Break and Cadfael?
Perhaps I’ve come across too harsh: after all, they knew how to work a crowd and could play. For a band who can claim this much longevity, touring mileage and back catalogue size, though, you’d hope for so much more from the actual music. The only nautical image conjured up by The Wave Pictures was that of a slowly sinking ship in a sea of irrelevance.
words ALEX CORNISH