Club Waveney provide indie reverie with ‘Thames’
The monochrome beachside sunset on the EP sleeve of Club Waveney’s debut outing, Thames, invites you back to the indie days of your youth in swaggering style.
Enraptured in indie riffs, Club Waveney, led by James Whatley and Tom Loxley, deliver a punky rock ‘n’ roll EP that is full of grit but tendered by swooning melody, with producer Jimmy Cass helping shape the final sound.
From ‘Broken Crown’ to ‘The Valley’, there’s an almost Parisian texture to the anthemic sound that honours the cool passions of those who created the record, one that slinks like a silken shirt and smooth-talks like the Disaronno drinker at an after-party.
Speaking about how the sparkling record came together, Cass commented, “The boys had made some rough demos on GarageBand and came to me to see if I could do anything with them. In about a two-week span, I replaced all the artificial drums with Jake Reed’s playing and then became hyper-focused on what else we could take away from the initial recordings.”
The result was a crunching exploration of indie rock ‘n’ roll at its grooviest. Underlayed with a melodic acoustic, the band and Cass weave tracks with traditional elements that feel filled with sweet indie reverie. It is an EP “fuelled mainly by red wine at night”, and the heady drip of Rioja imbues the record with a sense of drunken reflection and boozy escape.
Filled with expansive passion, Cass confirms, “There were so many layers of rhythm guitar that all ended up on the cutting room floor from these tracks, and lots of tightening of arrangements.” He adds of the painstaking process, “The songs were always there, I just had to find clarity. What would typically be done in pre-production ended up as all post-production work.”
The fun of that creative work-through is infectious, as Club Waveney ease through the gears on songs like ‘The Valley’; melodies and mixes defy the effort that went into making them, creating an easy Scott Walker waltz to the “revolver”-led tunes. With a live feel writ large across the sultry songs, Cass confirms, “Weirdly, it felt like we were all in the room when working on it”.
This attitude gives the record an indie club atmosphere despite its cocktail-polished production. Exploring his role in bringing the record together, Cass says the project feels like “a weird cross between teleportation and a time machine”. For the listener, it is pretty similar. It brings up remorse, reverie, and a gritty sense of revenge. All the while, you feel like that’s what Club Waveney are urging you to feel.
“The main ethos was to make something tight that cut straight to the point,” Cass says, “What does and doesn’t need to be there to serve the song. There’s too much music, and not too many people listen intently, especially to people they’ve never heard of.” But with that in mind, Club Waveney craft an EP that aims to induce years upon years of Rioja-drenched listens on YouTube, producing teary-eyes one time, and then drunken sing-alongs the next year.
Thames carries the same drunken quality of a lot of indie at its best, but beyond the swagger is a smidgen of wholesomeness that lifts the familiar chords to an empowering nth.
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