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[jefflewis]

I just got an advance copy of the new Wave Pictures album, the one they've done with Billy CHildish as producer/collaborator. Is this officially out yet?
Only listened to it once so far but it sounds awesome - I don't know what Billy Childish did to get these sounds, but the guitar and bass sound really "tough" in a great way. Maybe it's a particular kind of bass amp, or overdrive pedal or something? Whatever it is, the Wave Pictures have never had this much "punch" in their rock sound, I want to find out the secret and have the bass in my band sound like this!
Song for song I'd say that I prefer the "City Forgiveness" album, but there's still a lot of good stuff on the new album. A couple of Creedence Clearwater covers seem excessive, one might have been enough, but it's kind of funny to have two, I kind of like it. In some ways doing a cover of a Creedence song just shows the weaknesses of Dave Tattersall as a rock vocalist compared to the vocals in the original songs, but actually one of these Creedence covers works better than the other, I think.
I'll listen to it more. It's a rainy day, a good day to stay inside and listen to music, if you can avoid going out! I already had to go out and do some stuff. But now I'm back. Drying off.

[Dav]

Can not wait to hear it. I don t really like the single though. Two ccr covers sound like one too many. They already covered sinister purpose on an old lp, not their best cover. The new lp might be interesting, nothing beats their home recordings record in my opinion anyway.
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[carson]

Billy Childish seems to have a nack for this! Not sure what it is he actually does, but he lives/records in my town. A band member in one of my bands engineers at the studio where Billy records all his own stuff (his latest album "acorn man" is great) I'll have a word and see if he can shed some light on the matter!

[silverwood]

Just listening to the new Wave Pictures album now. Some of these guitar tones sound like The Who or something!
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I had a common goal. i caught a common cold.

[Dav]

yeah the opening song makes me think of The Who, i really like the song all the birds lined up or something, Dave sings so nicely on it, the first side sounds stronger than the second one.
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[jefflewis]

Speaking of Billy Childish, does anybody have any recommendations for his own albums? He has so many releases, with different band names, I don't know which ones to get!

[jefflewis]

Also, here's a nice interview with Dave Tattersall about the new Wave Pictures album... about 6 questions in, he says some very nice things about me, in fact it almost made me decide NOT to post this interview when I saw it because it would look like I'm just posting it because of the nice things he says! But here it is.

DAVE TATTERSALL OF THE WAVE PICTURES, INTERVIEWED BY JOHANNA AT PIAS, 2015

01. Why did you start
this project and what kind of feelings do you try to transmit via The Wave Pictures?


The idea is to try to be the band that I would have loved when I was 15 years old. I try to keep that in my mind at all times. That's the person I'm trying to impress and that's the reason behind a lot of the decisions that I take.

02. Like entity, how would you
describe The Wave Pictures, and who are your biggest influences in this project?

Things like The Troggs and Creedence Clearwater Revival... the great 1960s sound from the golden era of guitar based rock music. But the biggest effect on the album was collaborating with Wild Billy Childish. We wrote all the songs together and the album is as much his as mine I would say. It was a totally open, totally fun experience. I've never made an album where there was so much laughter and such a sense of excitement. We knew we had to release it, not matter what, because we had such a great time making it.

03. Your songs seem to reflect a world full of dreams and nostalgia… Are you aiming at this or is this just natural when you’re writing?

Yes, that's true! I often think about that. I always think that it sounds very pretentious when I talk about lyrics. I'm embarrassed to discuss them. In my mind, I'm a guitar player who writes lyrics occasionally. I'm not a writer who happens to play the guitar. My focus is always more on the music. I'll throw lyrics away if the song doesn't work, or bung the lyrics into a different song! I'm very easy with it. It's funny because then after I finish, it's the part that people seem to focus most on when they listen to a record. But, I think that's nice too. Sometimes I wish people noticed the music more, they almost never comment on Jonny and Franic (drums and bass) when they hear a record, but live in concert they notice how good they are. So, I have to say lyrics are a tricky subject to approach for all those reasons, but I absolutely know what you are saying to be true. I often think about that kind of lyric, that is the kind I like to write the most:
a mixture of dream and memory. I like the way the mind works in dreams and in memory, with strange juxtapositions and inaccuracies, jokes, half-truths, rumor, mystery, things disappearing out of the corner of your eye. I love that kind of song. That's the kind I like to write the most. And I got plenty of them on this new record! I think there's only one straight song: ''we fell asleep in the blue tent''. The rest could just be taking place in someone's mind. I like that a lot. Those are the most fun to sing for me. But, you know, I feel like a fool talking about it. I find writing lyrics to be a great pleasure and very easy for me, but I don't take it very seriously.

04. So, what kind of feelings do you put in yours songs?

05. What about your creating process? The birth of a song : who does what with The Waves Pictures? Do you mix up your ideas or is it more like a puzzle, everybody bringing their own part to the whole work?

I write songs and then I show them to Jonny and Franic. Sometimes they don't work but usually I have played them so many times on my own at home before I play them to Jonny and Franic that they will work when I show them to the band. When I write them I can think of Jonny and Franic so I know that they will play them right. I always try to keep them simple. I very very rarely give any instructions because I know that Jonny and Franic will just intuitively play them very well. So we don't really discuss it much. It's a very simple process and we work together very well. I write the songs, Franic plays what he wants on the bass and Jonny plays what he wants on the drums. Sometimes I say ''Jonny - could you use brushes on this song?'' or something like that but otherwise it's very straight-forward. We've played together so long it's usually quite obvious. On this record, the difference was that I wrote all the songs with Billy Childish. I wrote the lyrics and he wrote the music. So it was very different for me and for all of us. I had to learn the songs too! It was very stimulating. I was both the lead singer and also I was more 'in the band' than ever - I wasn't the sole writer. It was great fun. A refreshing change. I was thrilled with it all, with the experience of making this album.

06. Which actual bands do you feel close to?

Jeffrey Lewis is a very good friend and I feel lucky to say that because I also think he's a genius. You can learn everything you need to know about how to play live by watching him on stage. He's very spontaneous and a naturally gifted live entertainer, which I am not. He's also a great, naturally gifted songwriter, which I am not either. I'm basically a guitar player who writes songs and fronts a band by default. Jeff is the real thing. You can look to someone like that for guidance. But also, I just like his company. The great thing about Jeff is that he is very open-minded. For instance, is he could see what a gifted musician Franic Rozycki is (The Wave Pictures' bass player) and he gets Franic up on stage to play mandolin with him these days. Franic is a great mandolin player as well as a great bass player. I feel quite depressed by the state of music these days. I don't like any bands that I see very much. I don't listen to any records that were made after about 1975! That's crazy to admit, but it's true. All my heroes - Rory Gallagher, The Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Link Wray.... it's all old stuff. These days I listen to Django Reinhardt and Billie Holliday more than anything else. But Jeff Lewis is out there and he's as good as it gets in my opinion. He's totally underrated. I think he's brilliant. He's incapable of writing a bad lyric or making a false move of any kind.

07. Did you have specific goals for the Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon LP?

No! Goals? Who needs goals? That's the kind of thing teachers and career advisers talk about! Goals are very unhealthy in my opinion. You're better off trying to learn to like what you have already than spending your whole life trying to achieve something that might or might not make you happy. That's a good recipe for unhappiness!

08. With this LP it sounds as if you’d got rid of some barriers, pop formats, your music seems deeper. What do you think?

Well, that's a very nice thought. I'd have to give all the credit to Wild Billy Childish for that. I know that I felt very comfortable and very free with y guitar playing and my performance. Everything was done to make us comfortable and to maximize how much fun we had while recording. It was an ''anything goes'' approach. The engineers were very gifted, too. Jim Riley engineered the record and also played the amazing blues harmonica on the album, so you can tell that he's a great musician. He made it very quick and easy. There was none of that crap you normally have to go through to make a record: six hours sound-checking the drums and all that bollocks. We had a take within 45 minutes of arriving at the studio! It was very quick and very easy and very fun. If something didn't work straight away we just abandoned it and moved onto something new. We wrote songs on studio time and recorded them straight away, we did it all so fast that we could do that.
Billy likes to say that writing a song is as easy as falling off a log! He's right! You can worry about what's good or bad later or not at all. It was just a lot of fun. But as for credit, I'd give all the credit to Billy for the changes in this record.


09. You chose to
collaborate with Billy Childish to record this album :
why this choice ? What have you done together ?

He's a wonderful man: a sonic genius and a great songwriter. He's a hero of mine so we asked him and luckily for us he said yes!


10. How do you make to keep so much spontaneity on stage after so many years?

Spontaneity and improvisation are of central importance to the live show. If you look at music history, we started out with bands trying to capture their live show in the studio - i.e. the live show was of primary importance in their minds. Gradually since the 1960s we have moved towards the modern era: bands now try to recreate their studio recordings live. The result is very boring. Most bands really don't know how to play. But you can tell the difference. When you see Jeff Lewis or Yo La Tengo or The Rolling Stones on stage, the music is alive and the effect is very powerful.


11. What
is the near future
of The Wave Pictures?

Lots of touring! Like Status Quo before us, we are rocking all over the world!

[jefflewis]

MORE of the DAVE TATTERSALL INTERVIEW for PIAS (about the new Wave Pictures album...)
-How is your new album doing? Do you use to
read the critics?

I personally try to avoid it. I like Andy Warhol's quote... ''You don't read your press, you weigh it''. You just have to be glad that you are getting press, really. It's a very important thing to keep a band going. Of course, I get curious and read the odd review, but I generally find that they have missed the point entirely. They don't even usually give accurate descriptions of records so that the public can decide whether they want to buy it or not. And there are too many albums that they describe as masterpieces, and too many that they dismiss entirely. Most albums are not either masterpieces or rubbish. The problem is that journalists are trying to get a name for themselves, they all want to be Lester Bangs! But it's not so easy to do this well. You have to be able to listen to music very carefully and how can you do that when you have a stack of ten albums to review every day? It's impossible!

-The album was co-written and recorded with
Billy Childish, using his guitars and amplifiers. How did
you approach him for this collaboration?

Through a friend. I can't believe he wanted to do it. He's so enthusiastic and such a nice man, full of positive energy, as well as being a total sonic genius.

-How come you sound so British regardless of
the fact that most of your influences are American (Lou
Reed, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman…)?

Ask Mick Jagger. He sounds British too!

-Are politics a trending topic in your
songwriting or do you consciously avoid it?

I'm not interested in writing about issues or party politics or making statements, personally. I think the protest song is a doomed format. Very very few people have done it well. Even Bob Dylan's best songs aren't his protest songs. But I think there are many kinds of politics. There is a politics to aesthetics to, to aesthetic choices. We have made a conscious decision to make the kind of music we like the sound of, not to try to court a larger audience with a more commercial sound. This is a political as well as an aesthetic decision - I don't believe you can separate the different elements out from one another.

-Guitar solos are not frequent in alternative
rock bands. Are guitar solos in The Wave Pictures a way to
channel spontaneity and improvisation in your
gigs?

Yes, exactly. Spontaneity and improvisation are of central importance to the live show. If you look at music history, we started out with bands trying to capture their live show in the studio - i.e. the live show was of primary importance in their minds. Gradually since the 1960s we have moved towards the modern era: bands now try to recreate their studio recordings live. The result is very boring. Most bands really don't know how to play. But you can tell the difference. When you see Jeff Lewis or Yo La Tengo or The Rolling Stones on stage, the music is alive and the effect is very powerful.

-What’s the “sinister purpose” behind
including two Creedence Clearwater Revival covers together
on your newest album?

We just wanted to pay tribute to one of the bands that inspires us to make music.

[misshelenc]

Aww that's lovely things to say about you. I enjoyed reading the rest of it too as I don't really (at all) know their stuff. I don't blame you for posting, if anyone ever says anything half as nice about me I would shout it in any area that the internet would let me! xx
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[jefflewis]

Thanks MHC!

[Dav]

[Dav]

Thanks Jeff, these are really cool, i always find it interesting to read about song writing process, and recording also.
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[carson]

[jefflewis]

I usually try to avoid "best of" comps, I feel like it gives a bad impression! Usually when I'm into an artist and I see the "best of" I really disagree with the selections!

[carson]

I'd probably suggest the first few Pop Rivets records, and anything by The Buff Medways.

Have You checked out his artwork?