The Waeve – City Lights Review

Much has changed for The Waeve since their self-titled debut last year. Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall have received a wave of new life experiences, from the birth of their daughter who is paid tribute to on their second record, City Lights, to the former heading off to tour with Blur. It was a year of moving parts and they take a leaf from the glam rock book to make sense of it all and secure their spot as one of the great, powerhouse duos of the alternative rock scene. What remains is the slick and complex sounds of their original but with a chance to wear their Tom Verlaine and David Bowie influences on their sleeve, a thin mask for emotionally candid and open pieces of work. Not all of City Lights is about the newfound parenthood the pair explores, but it is easy to hear those late-night writings and eternal, familial love. 

It makes the soul-filled, guitar-whining opener, City Lights, all that more special. The Waeve has headed in a new direction to their debut and this risk pays off. Gone is the slightly edgier, cooler sound and a softly-spoken, string-laden powerhouse is in its place. City Lights does the unthinkable and changes the very core of The Waeve, but does so successfully. Out of the darkness, as You Saw charts, and into the album materials which make up the heavier sound, the low hum of new wave sounds, Coxon lends his voice well to these moments. A chance to explore his tonal darkness on Moth to The Flame and an instrumental malaise on I Belong To… bring chances to find themselves. To further solidify what they learned from The Waeve and the suddenness of collaboration, the shock and fear of it all.  

City Lights has praise for those moments we think little of but, later in life, have a massive knock-on effect. There is a focus on the lyrical strengths of The Waeve this time around. Rather than cries of atrophy or repetition of those perfect lines heard on the first, there is a strengthening from the likes of Simple Days, a reminder of the vocal skills Dougall and Coxon hold. This does not mean there are no shots of instrumental brilliance, the album is filled with the softly-fitted explorations of love and humanity with a recently changed worldview. It crashes through on Broken Boys, the electronic meltdown at the start and vocal performance from Dougall as punk as the album gets. Pride for their newborn kicks in on Song for Eliza May and features a vulnerability expected of the pair. They are putting their child out there and paying tribute to them, an ambitious and enjoyably soft piece of City Lights.  

A bold continuation of what made the first album so good, City Lights is a risk-taking piece of work from two artists with years of experience between them. Druantia provides those sonically charged and challenging moments, with each artist pushed to their very limits and coming out the other end not just with a rewarding performance between them but a very layered, complex piece of work. All those moving parts come together and provide the great crescendos expected of the bass, percussion and jazz-like intonations heard in the latter half of the album while the crushing blows of their electrified, punk feel on singles like City Lights and Broken Boys are well placed. It is an album of two parts but those feelings are scrambled, intentionally unsure of their place but certain of their purpose. City Lights is another masterstroke from The Waeve.