THE WAVE PICTURES (UK) Chelsea, 07 May 17

BAMBOO DINER IN THE RAIN
We wanted to make an album as open-heartedly great as ‘’Boogie With Canned Heat’’ or “Rory Gallagher’’ by Rory Gallagher, a bluesy, boozy love letter to the guitar. We filled the album with American Primitive acoustic instrumentals, John Lee Hooker chugs and Link Wray style minor-key surf music. This album is set in the Bamboo Diner of my dreams, with rain beating on the windows and a jukebox stocked with blues.
The Wave Pictures are strange: an indie rock band with absolutely no indie rock influences. For years, all we’ve listened to has been the classic blues and rock and roll of America in the 50s and 60s. And yet, we’re always disliked those retro acts who slavishly copy the look and the sound, the haircuts and the fonts of the past, but miss the unfettered spirit of the music they love. We have a style of our own already, the way your eyes have a colour. We don’t want to be a blues band. But the blues is there, at the invisible core of everything we do. We love it.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “why bother making this impossibly groovy music? Almost no one likes it. To all intents and purposes, the robots have won”. Ah, but then, as the great French philosopher Michel Foucault taught us “where there is power there is resistance”. And resistance rarely comes as sexy, as deeply melancholy, as this. The robots haven’t quite won yet. This is the way to play the blues authentically when you’re english and were born in the 1980’s. In a more enlightened age, this would be a smash-hit single.
What is the Bamboo Diner in the Rain? It is a dream palace, with Hawaiian Pizza on the menu, a pool table (of course) and a juke box stacked with Freddie King and Buddy Guy 7 inch vinyls.

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