The Wave Pictures with Icy Moon Explorers
The Marrs Bar, Worcester, 20th October 2024
Most of Icy Moon Explorers are teachers who are, er, moonlighting as a band. I’ve done my homework and found out that they take their name from the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which is the first non-US spacecraft sent into the solar system. Icy Moon Explorers are not on a journey to Jupiter, which is just as well, as we need them to stay on Earth to play their cleverly written pop songs.
Lead singer Tor introduces the band: Jonny on keyboards, Keiran on lead guitar, and Alex on drums. Then, in non-teacher style, she says, “We won’t go around calling your names – we’ll just call you ‘The Audience’”. This is a wise move, as the size of the audience would mean it’d be midnight before The Wave Pictures could take their turn on stage.
First song ‘Uncommon’ has a chorus that’s as catchy and chirpy as The Kinks’ ‘Village Green Preservation Society’. ‘If’ has nothing to do with Rudyard Kipling, but it is an exceedingly good slice of britpop indie. The keyboard flourishes on ‘Spaceman’ are, to my weird ears, the aural equivalent of fluttering angelic jellyfish. After the song’s end, Tor insists that ‘space politics does exist!’ Perhaps, though what is certain is that Icy Moon Explorers are warm enough to melt a Tory MP’s ice-cold heart. On set closer ‘Universe’, the band sing of wandering ‘in a changing tapestry’, which is a perfect way to describe the variety of their inventive and joyful songs. Indeed, forget space exploration – if the stars align, you’ll discover Icy Moon Explorers.
Ten years ago, The Wave Pictures wrote an album called Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon with Billy Childish, who co-founded the Stuckism art movement. To be a Stuckist is to be a stickler for authenticity. The Wave Pictures are keeping it real but always with a big smile on their faces, as encapsulated by these lyrics from their second song of the evening, ‘Strange Fruit For David’:
‘A sculpture is a sculpture
Marmalade is marmalade
And a sculpture of marmalade is a sculpture
But it isn’t marmalade’
This is followed by ‘Back in the City’ from their most recent album When the Purple Emperor Spreads His Wings, which includes glam rock chords and Dave and Franic bouncing in unison as they sing ‘Come and live with me and we will be / Happy together’. On ‘French Cricket’, also on said album, they straddle the line between sincerity and irony in the way that only The Wave Pictures can:
‘I wanna play French cricket with you
And your shins can be the stumps
Just like they do it
Over the sea in France’
There are songs about Dave’s cat (‘Panama’), his favourite smell (‘Smell The Ocean’), a pirate (‘Flight from Destruction’), and there’s ‘Stay Here and Take Care of the Chickens’, which is “something of a fan favourite”. My own favourite was ‘Now You Are Pregnant’. Jonny steps forward from his drum kit to the front of the stage and becomes the lead vocalist. When do you ever see drummers do this? (Phil Collins doesn’t count.) Over Dave’s gently strummed chords, Jonny’s lovely voice sings lovely lyrics such as ‘We were only lonely little kids / Amidst stacks and stacks of slacks’ and ‘I could rush into the shop and tell you that I adore you / Because I adore you’. There are so many reasons to adore The Wave Pictures. Is there another band that combines Belle and Sebastian whimsy with Jim Hendrix guitar solos? If you answered ‘No’, give yourself an A*.
By: Neil Laurenson