Consistencies between their first and second album were delightful to hear. A need to hear The Waeve live bubbled up once more after the release of City Lights. It is not obscurity that drives demand, but the quieter shows and the fleeting tours. The Waeve will play The Leadmill in Sheffield, amid a few other dates, later this month. When we will next hear from them, who knows. For the time being, we have Love is All Pain, a roaring post-City Lights track that forms a tease for upcoming EP Eternal. Fleshing out the discography, bringing in some leftfield songs and deep cuts to keep a crowd guessing, that is the inevitable result of a song like Love is All Pain. An excellent song, but so too are most of The Waeve’s output. From the Tom Verlaine influenced City Lights to the heavy machine beat and soft vocal contrast of Love is All Pain, the band goes, once more, from strength to strength.
All the usual components of a Waeve song are in Love is All Pain. From the tremendous, overwhelming bed of instruments which bleed into the vocal performances from Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall to the lyrical observations. Love is All Pain is not a putdown of intimacy, but it charts the difficulties, the bumps in the road, and it does so with a charming set of instrumental flourishes. Dougall takes lead on the vocals and gives the song a tremendous edge as she and Coxon fiddle with new sounds, fresh routes to take their sound. Always innovating is the right way to produce post-album works, and where Love is All Pain may have settled well into City Lights, it feels stronger in isolation. Not an afterthought, but a postscript to the well-maintained stories and meanings to grasp at on City Lights.
The Waeve’s greatest strength is the suggestion of narrative consistency. This comes from the overlap of their songs, the similarity of their message, but the obscure and lucid affections pulled from this influence or that memory makes all the difference. It does on Love is All Pain, a gliding song which becomes heavier and heavier, a sharp yet subtle boom of instrumental bliss. The Waeve’s out-there sound, the interjection of saxophone and stylish keyboard work, was their great selling point on the self-titled debut. For City Lights, the catchier flourishes prevailed. Love is All Pain finds a comfortable middle ground for those exciting riffs and familiar tones.
What The Waeve has maintained is an understanding of darker, art rock tones. Adapting them not to lighter moments but brighter styles, is what gives them their edge. Love is All Pain may sound edgy in title, the sound you may hear from a band dealing with nothing but middle-aged heartbreaks, but Coxon and Dougall find a sincerity, a fear of the lackadaisical effect on a relationship or former flame. Love is All Pain brings on a sense of heartbreak but never makes it the purpose of the song, instead the story at hand, the lyrical timeliness and suggestive spirit of the song, is what makes it work. The Waeve continues with a strong sense of what their sound should be, what message they wish to bring. Eternal is set to do the same, or at least its lead single certainly does.
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