The Waeve
The Waeve (stylised as The WAEVE) is the debut studio album by the band of the same name, a duo consisting of English singer-songwriters Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall. The album was released 3 February 2023 by Transgressive Records. Background Coxon and Dougall first met in 2005 at a concert by Dougall's band the Pipettes, and saw each other around occasionally over the years, but didn't consider collaborating until they met again in December 2020 at a fundraiser for the Lebanese Red Cross at the Jazz Café in Camden Town, London where Coxon performed. The night of the fundraiser, they discussed working together and exchanged phone numbers. Over the following Christmas season, the two texted back and forth, sharing links to songs they both liked and exploring each other's music tastes. They decided to meet on 2 January, sharing a walk around Hampstead Heath and talking more music. Discovering a lot of common interests, they decided to start songwriting together, working in two or three sessions a week. The two subsequently started dating and had a baby girl together. The duo's name was inspired by an old English spelling of the word "sea" as "SAE", pointing to their English folk music inspiration, water-centric lyrics, and "a kind of reconciliation of feeling at odds with what [was] happening in" the United Kingdom at the time. Writing and production When the two got together to write, Coxon took the opportunity to write music that "people wouldn't necessarily expect from him, something with 'rich chord progressions.'" Neither expected their sessions to lead to enough songs for a full album, as they went into the process without any planning, just being happy to work "at their own pace, with no label, management or producer looking over their shoulder." Songs would start with chord sequences, evolving as the two found different melodies and harmonies within those sequences. As they would add new sections and string arrangements, they would eventually realise the song had extended to ten minutes long and need to rein it back in. Coxon compared the runaway process to a rabbit warren, saying some songs "went on forever and are still probably going somewhere, but the ones that we could keep control on ended up on the record." Writing sessions involved the two playing whatever instruments they had around, focusing on physical instruments to avoid getting lost in the possibilities of their digital audio workstation's "vast library of synths". While Dougall said "it just wouldn't be right" if the album didn't contain Coxon's guitar playing, it was his work on the saxophone, an instrument he is classically trained in, which "really helped to shape the multi-angled outline" of the album. Coxon engineered most of the album before the duo brought on James Ford to finish the record. Ford made significant changes such as replacing the duo's synthesiser recordings with real string instruments and adding other sounds including a flute. Other instruments on the record include a cittern and a six string bass