Music > Album Reviews

The Ninth Wave - Heavy Like A Headache

14/03/22

Glasgow Noise Pop quartet release their stunning sophomore album only to immediately announce an indefinite hiatus .  It is that famous old adage ‘the difficult second album’ do you stick with the winning formula (assuming your debut was a success) or do you decide to take a different path, introduce another sound, another genre and hope those who picked up your first record and runs with it? Well The Ninth Wave have done both of these things with magical effect. 

2019 saw the release of the bands debut record Infancy, an album full of brooding synths and stirring dual vocals. It was widely lauded, garnering positive reviews at pace. Heavy Like A Headache will undoubtley follow suit. 
Buoyed by the success of Infancy, and a refusal to rest on their laurels, they quickly retreated back into their craft, building their wall of sound and expanding it at the same time. It is an album infused by 80s synth pop, take for instance the third song on the album Heron On The Water, which has a strong The Human Leaguevibe about it. 
These Depopulate Hours is another song that brings electronic, pulsing vibes to the fore. It is the sound I could hear New Order recording with Young Fathers, yes THAT good. 

The single What Makes You A Man tackles issues of consent, airing Millie Kidd’s deeply personal lyrics [“I will feel the shame that you don’t feel / And I won’t feel the same now this is real”] with a heavy, lurching instrumental that seethes with defiance.

Pivotal is a stand out song for me. haunting vocals permeate the air, the chorus [I don’t understand my own love, I’m content with fear] has been rattling in my head from the moment I heard it.

Packed full energy, this record and the songs within it genuinely feel like anthems. There are nods to The Twilight Sad, especially their No One Can Ever Know album, both being able to make you dance and cry at the same time.
Produced by the band themselves and mixed by Max Heyes (Massive Attack, Doves, Primal Scream), Heavy Like A Headache explores feelings of grief, anxiety, anger and loneliness, and represents the 4-piece’s most triumphant and diverse body of work to date. Such a shame then that the band are calling time (for now) on The Ninth Wave, but what a record to bow out on. 

9/10