Consistent releases are not just an expectation of the modern music cycle, but a necessity. Keep yourself in front of as many eyes as you can. With two albums and now an EP, The Waeve has gone from a suggested partnership between Rose Elinor Dougall and Blur’s Graham Coxon, to a booming duo with a backlog big enough to suggest deep cuts are in place. You’re All I Want To Know remains their finest song, already given the cold shoulder by the touring team. Heartbreaking, but they make up for it with further material, seemingly the afterthoughts of the City Lights recording sessions. A live album, too. Keep yourself in the ears of listeners across the country, and success, or at least notoriety, is bound to come. Deservedly so. The Waeve remains one of the more interesting art rock groups of the last decade, and Eternal proves it.
A trio of songs which expand on those Tom Verlaine influences on City Lights. Lead single Love is All Pain may feel a tad maudlin, a bit needy, on first listen, but it grows from those tones. A fine blur of Dougall-led vocal work and the industrial instrumental pangs The Waeve are now striving to incorporate. Those complicated and often suspicious feelings towards the country, the obsession with the sea which began the band, are lost to loveless encounters, to bold shots of slight punk disorientation. It is a thrill of a change, keeping the brass and percussion joys of the debut album but overhauling the lyrical impression. Love is All Pain grows into its tones thoroughly well, a welcome change of pace to the songs which brought on darker folk roots. They are not lost, just exchanged for some dark jazz, some smoky suggestions. They are not yet ready to let go of their Van Der Graaf Generator influences, and thankfully keep it at the core of this project.
It’s The Hope That Kills You compounds the feeling of loss and shame heard on Love is All Pain. Those repeated desires for a loved one to return home, the repetition from Coxon selling it on a bed of strings, which build up the theatrics of this romantic grieving period. It works well as a concept, as the piece of a larger project. Eternal has some real beauty to its string sections, a constant joy for the band after enlisting a series of exceptional stage and studio additions. EP closer Eternal gives us that much needed shot of optimism, the light cap on a darker, often moving trio of songs. Sweet saxophone use, nicely adapted into a back-and-forth between Dougall and Coxon. It paints an excellent picture, this trilogy of songs.
Contained within Eternal is a brief story of longing, reclamation and satisfaction. There is still a coldness to it, a brief and frazzled feeling to the emotional turmoil charted across these tracks, and that is all part of the charm. Eternal is proof EP projects have a life of their own in the right hands. Instrumental thrills and emotional spills are all part of the quality The Waeve continually brings – and Eternal is an extension of the City Lights mood, a strong one. They sound fearless in the face of change and chart that desire to constantly shift their sound and style with adventures into where these new instrumentals, where the sense of dread and love can bring them. Those messages are a deep pool where anything can spill from them, and The Waeve depends on the seasoned experience of both Coxon and Dougall, their experience brings the best out of a project like Eternal.
