There’s the guy who goes to the sea hoping for ice cream for everyone and the fulfillment of other desires. There is the house, painted a melancholy blue. And there is the past, which keeps sneaking up from behind to cloud the present. Welcome to the world of indie folk ‘n’ blues band The Wave Pictures, where little works but hope remains intact.
On the song “Sure & Steady,” songwriter, singer and guitarist David Tattersall remembers the infamies he experienced as a child. Only the eyes of a girl were safe and constant – and the music that surrounded him even then. At Wave Pictures, songs and albums, films and books are not only systemically relevant. They are lifesavers. The band from the village of Wymeswold (two pubs, a supermarket, annual highlight: a duck race) has been releasing since the early noughties, and the trio is always good when it doesn’t get too carried away with jamming and playing.
Sure, the band plays brilliantly together. But when solos become an end in themselves, it gets boring. Recently, Wave Pictures has slowed down the pace of their releases. GAINED/LOST benefits from this, the songwriting is better than ever. “Alice” (the chorus!) and “Samuel” (the violin!) are hits, “Faded Wave Pictures T Shirt” is a great tale of faded memories – and sounds like Galaxie 500 on a surfing holiday on England’s east coast.
This review appears in Musikexpress 3/2026.
