And so we come to the end of our SXSW adventures, with our final session, from The Wave Pictures. Only 5 months later than planned. Sorry boys.

This session was even less straight forward than the epic Efterklang debacle. You see, our filming equipment is pretty compact and mobile. Acoustic instruments not so much. So when the bands didn’t have the acoustic stuff they needed, we made arrangements to borrow some. While our Efterklang acoustic guitar never arrived, unfortunately the nice guy who lent us one for The Wave Pictures had brought a guitar with a few problems, which meant it couldn’t be used. Not to worry, we thought, this is SXSW. There will be 10 guys with acoustic guitars walking past in the next few minutes. Nope. Eventually, we happened upon Gino. Or rather he happened upon us, with his weird hybrid boombox/amp thing blasting out some 80s beats. You can see him at the start of the first video. Singer and guitarist David Tattersall whipped out the electric guitar he had brought for the gigs and plugged it into the beast.

So what we got was a lovely, if slightly odd, reverb drenched rendition of a couple of Wave Pictures songs, with bassist Franic on backing vocals and drummer Jonny on snare.

First track, “Tiny Craters In The Sand”, appears on their 2009 album If You Leave It Alone. The second, “Now You Are Pregnant”, was one half of a double A side single in 2007. Both show off that effortless twinning os the catchy pop hook, albeit a little off-kilter, with a quirky and intelligent turn of phrase. David Tattersall has always reminded us of a young Darren Hayman in that way. There’s a subtlety to a Wave Pictures melodrama that is comforting to anyone who’s ever been an awkward teenager or twenty-something. Seeing these played out in the glaring midday sunshine of Austin brings out some lovely qualities you might never notice watching the band back in grey old Blighty. And we’re thankful for that.

Find out more a thewavepictures.com