Glasgow’s The Ninth Wave today announce their second album Heavy Like A Headache will be released on 11th March 2022 via Distiller Records. Alongside the album announcement, the band are releasing their new single “What Makes You A Man” with a stirring black and white accompanying video; the final instalment of a trilogy of videos directed by Rianne White.
The new single and album announcement arrives off the back of a sold-out UK tour and a Scottish Album Of The Year nomination for their Faris Badwan (The Horrors)-produced EP ‘Happy Days!’. Heavy Like A Headache is the band’s second full length album following their 2019 debut Infancy which garnered widespread critical acclaim and nominations for the AIM Award Album Of The Year and Scottish Album of the Year.
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.
New 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.
Speaking on the release, Millie said: “What Makes You A Man is as claustrophobic as it is cathartic. It’s a journey of self deprecation, and how one event can be such a throwaway meaningless action for one half but be life changing for the other. I don’t want to blame myself for the degrading actions of others anymore – I want to stand up to this shame I hold with me, and recognise that it is not mine, I’m just the one carrying it.
It’s a hard one to swallow, but it’s a situation most of the women I know have been in. To be a ‘man’, do you have to dominate? To face your own mistakes, to look at yourself and admit that you were wrong – does that make you more of a man? So what does that make me?
We wanted to the put the listener into the scene of the song – everything is falling over itself, nothing is really in the right place at the right time. It’s sleazy, it sticks your shoes to the ground like the floor of a grimy club, it’s lonely but it’s too much all at once. From the noise saxophone to the endless guitar & synth feedback, you get an idea of what the inside of my head sounds like – I wanted it to be an unfortunately relatable discomfort.”
Celebrating honesty and real life, The Ninth Wave want their listeners to find comfort in their music. They want their fans to feel safe; to be confident in who they are, and to know they’re not alone. If there’s one thing that stands out more than anything in the new album though, it’s The Ninth Wave’s refusal to be pigeonholed. The band have been labelled many things in their time – post-punk, electro-pop, indie – but what really drives them is a desire to break free from these loose categorisations altogether.
Constantly developing and pushing their sound into exciting new territory, sonically The Ninth Wave are challenging expectations and preconceptions of the their music with their second album. Leaning toward influence from contemporaries such as Yves Tumor, Savages, Eartheater, Kelly Lee Owens and Young Fathers – the quartet assuredly retain their own distinct songwriting craft and approach.
“It’s a cathartic thing for both us and the listeners; we want to help with normalising being emotional and finding comfort within your sadness”, the band went on to say.
STREAM, “What Makes You A Man”:
https://bfan.link/
PRE-ORDER, Heavy Like A Headache:
https://bfan.link/heavy-like-
