When: 7.30pm on Saturday 1 February 2014
Where: The Deaf Institute, 135 Grosvenor Street, Manchester M1 7HE

We’re delighted to be welcoming back The Wave Pictures – for their biggest headline show so far.

Last year, The Wave Pictures spent six weeks driving around America in a small van on tour with Allo Darlin‘. The result of this trip is their fifth studio album – the double album City Forgiveness, released on Moshi Moshi on 21 October.

‘We visited Hank Williams’ house and Billy The Kid’s grave, watched the Golden Gate bridge disappear into the clouds, and had our frisbee confiscated by a cop,’ says vocalist and lyricist Dave Tattersall. ‘We played some great shows together, and we became good friends, and we drove and we drove and we drove and we drove.’

Whilst they drove Tattersall scribbled in a notebook – ‘anything that popped into my head’ – and on his return found ‘a few hundred crumpled well-travelled pages in at the bottom of my bag’. These crumpled notes formed the basis of City Forgiveness and, in Wave Pictures typically prolific style, Tattersall wrote 20 songs in ‘a very jet-lagged and confused week’.

They clearly had a double album on their hands; not a concept album about America so much as a testament to the way that travel excites the imagination. The title came to Tattersall in a dream and reminds him of City Lights – the Charlie Chaplin movie and the San Francisco bookshop that published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

The Wave Pictures took a trip to Toe Rag Studios to record this exclusive footage of The Woods, taken from City Forgiveness. The song, typical of Tattersall’s wry observational style, is inspired by myriad touring experiences – both good and bad – including visiting the Buddy Holly museum, playing pool with locals, sleeping on mattresses infested with the cocoons of black widow spiders.

‘… full of big sky riffs and lyrics about an America only a stranger can see… a postcard from another time and place: you’ll wish you were there’ – The Big Issue

‘… starts brilliantly with the ragged Nick Cave-ness of All My Friends… Red Cloud Road (Part Two) would fit in well on Paul Simon’s Graceland’ – NME

Support comes from Ivan Campo. The acoustic folk group have been spotted playing pubs, clubs, venues, kitchens, festivals, ballrooms and basements all over the UK, and have shared stages with Nick Harper, Jeff Lewis, Roddy Woomble, Misty’s Big Adventure, Sea of Bees, Stealing Sheep, Magic Arm, Shack, and The Pale Fountains.

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