Waste of Paint and Baudelaire Waltz

As a rule Leeds Living doesn’t normally cover record or video reviews, but we watched this and decided Waste of Paint’s Baudelaire Waltz would be a rare exception.

This neo indie quartet is delivering a poignant message, made none the less so by its abject honesty…..about self-hate, guilt, anxiety, pushing away those who care for us and throwing ourselves into work, because what else is there and what happens if we don’t?  It’s about wondering, if we ask for help, whether the person we ask will then be the same person we’ve always known or whether our cry for help will change them in our eyes, or us in theirs – and do we dare to take that risk.  The message is that we’re not alone – but does that mean we’re not alone in the way that we feel, or not alone because there’s always someone to lean on and that we should lean on others; we should take that risk?

Speaking about the video, Adam Brodie, with typically stark honesty, explained: “I had to let go and ‘break down’ in front of camera … I had to bear my soul, I had to cry. And I did, a lot. It was the only way I could do justice to the words that had poured out of me when writing the song. I had to tell my truth.

We are not our thoughts; we are the grand observers of our thoughts,” he continues. “Our songs are narratives based on what we are feeling at the time. Sometimes it’s near suicidal despair; other times it’s anger at what is happening to the world. But every song – every line – means something; more often than not it has multiple meanings, depending on which way you interpret the lyrics, but that’s what we like.

Waste of Paint, formed in Hull with core members Adam Brodie and Dan Spooner, is essentially an arts project  (‘We just paint with sounds.’) with an ever-evolving door of creatives.  Adam writes the words and Dan produces, although they write and produce as a team and songs are recorded as a full band, including Jamie Dean, drummer and founder member, and Paul Sargeson, bassist and multi-instrumentalist (with occasional vocal harmony).

It’s difficult to pigeon-hole this band, difficult to confuse them with any other, and very difficult to ignore them.  Their songs are devised and performed to be provocative.  Well, they work for me.

Find out more https://www.awasteofpaint.com/

Photographs provided by Ian Cheek Press

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