The Wave Pictures’s umpteenth visit to Brighton – their favoured air hockey location – was ostensibly to perform Daniel Johnston’s classic 1990 album Artistic Vice in its entirety.
But not everything was as it seemed. Not only had the air hockey table disappeared from the Palace Pier much to frontman David Tattersall’s disgust, but the trio swiftly abandoned the Johnston plan for an impromptu set of fan favourites and audience requests.
Those Johnston songs which were performed in the first half included the full-on rocker My Life Is Starting Over and drummer Johnny Helm battling a sore throat to sing Happy Soul. All the selections showed the songwriting genius of the disturbed cult figure – the trio making them sound like mainstream rock classics as oppose to the sort of songs largely beloved by fellow musicians.
It was Tattersall’s back catalogue the packed crowd had clearly come to hear, as they called out requests from 2008’s Cassius Clay through to The Woods off latest album City Forgiveness. Some songs were so old Tattersall admitted he didn’t recognise the person who wrote the original.
The trio were so tight any lyrical slip-up or fluffed ending came as a shock – they relied on their interplay and sheer musical ability to carry the songs rather than banks of effects pedals.
Their support Fossa was pretty much the polar opposite - creating an earnest but infectious sound indebted to 1980s dreampop on a stage scattered with synths, pedals and laptops. Certainly a band worth keeping an eye on, but a strange bedfellow.
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