In December 2020, between lockdowns, Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall were part of a show at a jazz cafe in London. Both felt at something of a low ebb, but over many conversations, a common ground was established, and a creative way of negotiating those lows emerged.
The result is The Waeve, with both artists keen to refuse much of their past musical histories. In doing so, they have managed to produce a real salve for our times. Created in isolation, this is one of the more optimistic pieces of work produced in confinement.
Coxon recalls occasionally going outside for walks with Dougall, and sensing an eerie atmosphere crackling on the air, where fear was a default and confusion was everywhere. That discomfiting feeling underpins the record, but it is transformed into a soft and nuanced musical landing – where folk-horror meets English pastoral, with a little fleck of post-punk here, and a little bit of free jazz there.
Can I Call You is a krautrock ballad with gorgeous guitar solo (for how could Coxon not?) and clever arrangements that eventually crash into nothing but saxophone chords. In fact, the saxophone ends up being a kind of star on this record – a favoured instrument of Coxon’s from his youth, it is used elegantly, cleverly, and intuitively throughout.
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Kill Me Again is almost industrial in places, but playfully so, and Over and Over harness a kind of mellow 1970s rock, where the dusky softness of Dougall’s voice takes the edges off Coxon’s spindly, lovely tone.
Sleepwalking brings in a scuzzy Spectoresque wall of sound, folding in luscious strings and lyrics about being “brought up to be disappointed”. It plays like a very particular kind of English kitchen sink drama, with its beautiful bass lines, and compelling saxophone that starts to resemble wheezy accordion.
Drowning conveys a wistful sadness, which brings to mind the peerless Broadcast in its strange and winding beauty, and Someone Up There is sonically swampy yet strident. All Along brings some medieval folk energy with Coxon’s use of the cittern, a folk lute, which engages brilliantly with Dougall’s use of synth, suggesting an interplay between older wisdom and more modern conceits.
Something like the piano-led Undine, and Alone and Free are loose, lovely compositions, with Coxon’s world-weary vocal complementing Dougall’s spectral singularity. Doo-wop abounds on album closer You’re All I Want to Know, it is charmingly old-fashioned in ways, so nourishing and deeply-felt, and by carving out a deft romanticism in a world that seeks to crush it, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
