THE WAEVE Impressed Big Time At LOKERSE FEESTEN In BELGIUM

10 August 2023

British alt-dream-pop-rock duo THE WAEVE – featuring Graham Coxon (Blur’s guitarist)
and songstress Rose Elinor Dougall launched, last February, one of the most compelling albums of the year with their Self-Titled Debut LP.

A multi-faceted, versatile opus with different sonic textures for different moods and matching vocal performances by both. Coxon‘s bedazzling saxophone, Dougall’s subtle piano play and strings create warm moments on the slow ones and all cylinders are turned for the fast ones. As the cliché says, “it’s a grower” that slowly but surely gets under your skin. Stream it below.

Last Monday the duo played with their band at Lokerse Feesten Festival in Belgium.
They were sandwiched between Siouxsie and Placebo, who I’ve seen several times before.

So, as planned, I left Siouxsie‘ (awful) show (always out of tune) to see The Waeve‘s gig in full. Great choice (as I excepted). They grabbed our aural attention from the kick-off and played 7 songs out of the short 8-track set, coming from that glorious LP.

They started smoothly with jazzy humdingers ‘Can I Call You’, ‘Over And Over’, Drowning, ‘Undine‘Sleepwalking‘, and coloured with smooth saxophone play by Coxen and Dougall‘s fitting, sensuous voice, shiny synth touches and cool dance moves.

With 3 to go, all burners went on, the amount of decibels grew (manic drummer!), and the duet vocals got really ardent and intense. The Waeve band rocked big time with dynamite crackers Kill Me Again (my fav), Someone Up There and Something Pretty (not on the album).

Unfortunately it was all over in an eye/ear blink, actually 50 minutes. As we all know time flies when you’re having fun. Many spectators looked hypnotized and as I could grab the setlist, several approached me to take a photo of it. The Waeve made lots of new fans that night. Deservedly so. Afterward I went to see Placebo, but it felt like I had seen enough while revisiting the Waeve experience on the screen in my mind. I left after a half hour while Kill Me Again was playing in my head.

STREAM ALBUM

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