Sweeping The Nation Albums Of 2009: Number 24

Less than a year on from Instant Coffee Baby and with two EPs in between the Wave Pictures released their eighth album, a figure that doesn't include two Andre Herman Dune collaborations, one with Stanley Brinks, Jonny Helm's solo release and the Dan Of Green Gables album that Tattersall wrote and sang on. It's taking the piss now. Those who’ve come across Wymeswold’s finest before will largely know what to expect, a very English take on the Velvets/Jonathan Richman line of stripped back, unglamorous indie rock’n'roll, lyrically vaulting and imagery heavy yet safely grounded in small town reality and possessing a very neat turn of phrase, sung by a man in a slightly nasal accent.

There’s less of the Hefner about this one as this is a more acoustic set, recorded during studio downtime while contributing to someone else's album. If it wasn’t recorded on the fly in one take, it certainly sounds like it. The title and opening track is an interesting diversion in their terms, built on a slow, slinky bassline and featuring a languid brass section before Tattersall attempts to paint himself as a bedsit lo-fi soul man, albeit one which sees him gather the idea for a song from a note on his fridge. From then on it’s pretty much as you’d imagine, not that there’s much wrong with that at all. Canary Wharf runs on a Johnny Cash rhythm and contains the lyric “I wrote my name on a banana peel/There should always be a meal with my name on it”. On I Thought Of You Again Tattersall claims to have written “a thousand verses, each one about doctors and nurses, on paper napkins in diners” and eventually claims that he was reminded of ‘you’ “when the pissed up student girls teased me with the sound of my own name”. Too Many Questions features a shout out to “the penguin march at Whipsnade Zoo”. There is, as far as we can tell, one of Tattersall's trademark guitar solos. You get the picture. As ever with them, when the playing is this loose, everyone’s having fun and the listeners are being attracted by Tattersall’s pin-sharp lyrics where the devil is in the detail, production values are as nothing.

[Spotify]

If You Leave It Alone


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