The WAEVE live in Manchester
Is Graham Coxon’s genre-hopping side-hustle more than the sum of its parts?
Photo: Kalpesh Lathigra
What is it about seminal figures of the Britpop canon and supergroups / side projects? The Good, The Bad & The Queen. The Tears. JARV IS… They’re a dime a dozen at this point: seemingly almost a contractual obligation that if one was part of the Cool Britannia cultural zeitgeist, one must also form an eclectic side-hustle at a later date. Some of these outfits become gargantuan pop culture institutions in of themselves (Gorillaz). Others, ripe with potential, sadly deflate (Freebass). And then some are Beady Eye.
The WAEVE, fronted by Blur’s six-stringed wunderkind Graham Coxon and indie pop starlet Rose Elinor Dougall of The Pipettes, at first glance seem to fall into this back-log of tired ex-Britpoppers turning to less commercial avenues.
Although I think of Coxon as one of Britain’s best ever guitarists (as much a generational talent as Johnny Marr was before him), I had never listened to The WAEVE. The cynic in me shrugged them off as just another piece of post-Britpop landfill. However, their music intrigued me. The loose equation: grizzled, metallic guitar/bass sounds, plus melodic femme-vocals, equals pretty good music is one I’ve always stood by. Wiry post-punk meets melancholy folk? Perhaps The WAEVE might just have something up their sleeve that subverts the conjoined legacy of Blur and The Pippettes. I go into their Manchester show open-minded; I come out a believer.
Frankly, many of The WAEVE’s songs are unavoidably Scary Monsters-lite (City Lights is a half-digested cover of It’s No Game (P.1)). There’s a sense of all-too-familiar recycling at work here. However, the band chug away with a palpable gleam in a live setting… and with enough variation in their palette to pass through claims of unoriginality.
Opening the set with the recently-released Love Is All Pain, front woman Dougall begins the evening as synth-pop seductress. Her vocals acrobat across a whirring drum machine, a catchy love letter to eighties artifice. Stylistically ricocheting into art-folk, Eternal lights up the basement like a candle wick in a cave. Where Joy Division’s The Eternal uses a never-ending time capsule to evoke a post-industrial purgatory in which dreams are dashed and growth frozen, The WAEVE’s Eternal warmly revels in the endlessness of love (Give me a thousand lifetimes…). A tender ballad from where folk dreams are made of, Dougall’s peculiar sense of melody bursts with light.
The group are at their best when Dougall, rightfully, takes the lead. The WAEVE front woman’s vocals command the arrangements in mascara-lined melancholy. Guitarist/saxophonist/vocalist Coxon, the bespectacled brains behind Modern Life Is Rubbish, unarguably has a feeble voice… even when performing the lead vocal for hit single Coffee & TV, or sparkling deep-cut You’re So Great, his voice has always been one of pale uncertainty. However, it’s perfect for backing vocals: harmonic aspersions from the side of the stage. Maybe this is why Coxon and Dougall are an unlikely vocal match made in indie heaven.
Part of the appeal of watching The WAEVE comes in the infectious pleasure of watching Coxon, simply, play the guitar. It may sound trivial, but he’s one of those guitarists that just watching his fretting hand fall up and down the fretboard is an inspiration in of itself. Seeing Coxon play — up close in a tiny venue, no less — reawakens the D.I.Y. wonder from my teenage years of looking up guitar tabs online and fumbling along to pop songs in darkened rooms. In 2025, the second biggest ‘nerd’ of Britpop (don’t worry, Jarvis, that title will always belong to you) deserves to rank amongst George Harrison, John Squire and David Gilmour as one of the UK’s very best.
Coxon’s stringed genius is at its most evident in the silken waltz Over And Over. A (metaphoric) glitter-ball hangs from the basement ceiling as Coxon’s telecaster glitters. Saxophones swoon and croon. A mournful mix of Bowie’s Blackstar, Iggy Pop’s Free and Blur’s own The Ballad Of Darren (which I, shamelessly, believe to be Blur’s best out of their 37-year-long career), the track fumbles in the most devastatingly divine way. You don’t get this at Wembley Stadium.
Perhaps the most surprising element of The WAEVE’s quality comes not in the form of their music, or even performance, but in the tangible core dynamic between Coxon and Dougall. The two masterminds of the group lead the set through a series of TV-dinner squabbles, technology blunders and misheard asides (‘I can’t hear you, babe. Speak into the mic.’) It’s like if the Fleetwood Mac of the late seventies went to marriage counselling and sorted out their issues. Of course, it’s not in the least bit rock ‘n’ roll. But it works.
There’s a unique charm in The WAEVE’s front personas. Coxon, once the timid, troubled young talent, becomes the kind, gentle father who cracks jokes that don’t quite land (and then drinks his weight in IPA once the kids have gone to bed). Before diving into a mandolin-led song dedicated to the couple’s daughter, Song For Eliza May, the couple chat idly about missing their child whilst on tour. Dougall jokes about the childcare updates she occasionally receives: usually to do with toilet habits.
The ‘married with children’ dynamic is, unarguably, far removed from the sleazy influences of the synthesiser side of post-punk / art-rock (The Stranglers, Magazine, XTC), but it sings with genuine authenticity. The couple don’t really care if it’s not ‘cool’ to revel in their parenthood… and what’s lovelier than that?
In spite of a venue downgrade from Manchester Academy 2 (already a small-ish space) to the tiny Students Union basement (where, as a student, I’ve seen such acclaimed institutions as the Taylor Swift Society silent disco DJ set), The WAEVE turn a Tuesday evening into a tantalising treat. Eclectic, eccentric and genuine, The WAEVE are whatever they want themselves to be. Perhaps not quite free of the past, but certainly comfortable with it (Now that we are bound together / Soul and spectre / Find the meaning of forever…).
Is the disappointing turnout a case of ego-tainting whiplash for the Wembley headliner? No, he and his partner loved it. As did we.