Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougal‘s The Waeve have shared a new single, ‘Broken Boys’ – you can listen to it below.
The song serves as the third preview of the Blur guitarist and Pipettes singer’s second studio album ‘City Lights’, which is out on September 20 via Transgressive (pre-order/pre-save here).
Produced by James Ford, the Cabaret Voltaire-inspired track opens with distorted guitar, and finds the duo leaning into a gritty, garage rock sound.
“Fuck your party/ You make me wanna throw my soul away/ Left in the dark so I never/ No, never/ Find the way out,” Coxon sings. “You’re dressing up just to take them down/ Oh/ You’re dressing up just to take them down.”
‘Broken Boys’ is accompanied by a suitably dark and disorientating official visualiser, created by Tom Pallant. The clip intersperses blurry performance footage with shots of isolated and eerie locations. Watch it here:
The band’s new single follows on from the ‘City Lights’ title track and the song ‘You Saw’. Additionally, The Waeve have shared official live versions of each cut as part of their ‘City Lights Sessions’ video series on YouTube. Check out the ‘Broken Boys’ performance above.
Speaking in a previous statement, The Waeve explained: “‘You Saw’ is a song about acknowledging how seemingly tiny decisions can have a seismic impact on the course of one’s life, how sometimes it feels like the way things turn out are predestined.
“It’s about reconciling a past version with the new version of one’s self and being grateful for how things work out. It’s built around a rhythmic string line to reflect the sense of propulsive forward motion.”
The tracklist for The Waeve’s ‘City Of Lights’ is:
‘City Lights’
‘You Saw’
‘Moth To The Flame’
‘I Belong To…’
‘Simple Days’
‘Broken Boys’
‘Song For Eliza May’
‘Druantia’
‘Girl of the Endless Night’
‘Sunrise’
The Waeve are scheduled to play a headline show at the Village Underground in London on October 29, following a run of in-store dates. See the full itinerary, and find any remaining tickets here (London).
SEPTEMBER
20 – Rough Trade, Liverpool
21 – Rough Trade, Nottingham
23 – Rough Trade, Bristol
24 – Rough Trade East, London
OCTOBER
29 – Village Underground, London
The duo released their acclaimed eponymous debut album in February 2023. A deluxe edition featuring four extra songs arrived the following month.
Speaking to NME in 2022 about the beginnings of the collaborative project, Coxon said: “We came up with the idea of how we could forge forward through life. Do we actually write some music, do something completely different, and out of our comfort zone, or just give the whole bloody thing up and forget about it, generally – life, music and all the rest of it.”
Dougall agreed that “it was a really tough time for everyone”, but that having a project to focus on gave them the impetus to make more of life and their creative needs.
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