Since embarking on a solo career for the first time back in 1998, Graham Coxon hasn’t really put a foot wrong. While he may not enjoy the same level of commercial success or constant spotlight as Blur bandmate Damon Albarn, his body of work is of a consistent and often superlative quality (2006’s Love Travels At Illegal Speeds, for example, or his return to Blur for The Magic Whip) and his songs boast such an abundance of licks, riffs and hooks, you might
well be inclined to wonder if he won’t at some point run out of ideas.

If the first two albums from The Waeve are anything to go by – the musical duo comprised of Coxon and singer/songwriter Rose Elinor Dougall – that doesn’t look like happening anytime soon. Their eponymous debut LP, released a little over a year ago, proved to be one of the best albums of 2023 and set a very high bar indeed for its follow-up, City Lights, out September 20th via Transgressive Records.

Both albums have a lot in common, but where their previous record was conceived and developed at the height of the Covid pandemic, to a backdrop of isolation and doom, on the opening few tracks of City Lights, The Waeve sound like a band set free, let loose. It is noisier, darker, bolder, fiercer; the sound leans more into post punk, goth, new wave territory and there are shades of Depeche Mode, DEVO and even pre-Dare! Human League on here. (The explosive, gnarly “Broken Boys” is an out and out lo-fi banger.) Coxon is back on sax but his playing is looser, gnarlier, less rigidly tethered to melody, his guitar parts more prickly and rugged and the entire fabric of the album is studded with basslines so loury they have an almost predatory feel. Where their debut was a folkier, more pastoral animal, City Lights, as its title suggests, is a decidedly more urban beast: the arrangements are busier, the different textures more closely packed together.

This, however, isn’t always to the album’s advantage. Especially on the earlier tunes, at times it almost feels a bit too much, too moreish: for all the music soars, there are moments when it could be said to fly too close to the sun and tracks like “You Saw” and “Moth To The Flame” could maybe do with being scaled back a little. For it is on the album’s more understated, English folk-infused numbers that City Lights truly hits the peaks it is aiming for and reproduces some of that widescreen, cinematic magic that made its humbler predecessor such a beautiful piece of work.

“Druantia” is a swirling, sprawling epic clocking in at just under 8 minutes and fully justifies the mystic power of its title – Druantia being the name of a Gallic tree goddess, the Queen of the Druids, no less. The sublime “Song For Eliza May”, with its mandolin-strummed intro, is a shapeshifting, labyrinthine song that sounds like it might have been written centuries ago, that culminates in the kind of grandiose symphonic splendour that might once have accompanied some Renaissance court dance, with bewigged and powdered partners gliding gracefully around one another, gloved hands touching. And album closer “Sunrise”, anchored in Dougall’s bewitching, nocturnal vocals, ventures into chamber pop and late night jazz. As far as denouements go it is, quite frankly, brilliant.

Ultimately, all the elements that made The Waeve’s eponymous debut such a terrific album are present again on City Lights: the liquid, chimeric quality of the songs, the unpredictable, and unconventional arrangements, and above all their ability to weave together disparate styles and tones with a skill that is nothing short of alchemy. The well of Coxon’s creativity seems bottomless, his scope for invention and experimentation without either limit or like, his ear for the quirky, idiosyncratic melody and catching hook as fresh as it was in his early Blur days. Not only that, but in Rose Elinor Dougall he appears to have found a musical partner who is taking him in new directions – and to new heights.

Pre-order City Lights HERE