7. play with earth! 0.03 - wave to earth

wave to earth's third EP album is a musically progressive journey that leans into their jazz and rock origins while maintaining the band's core musical identity

Sep 13, 2024

I adamantly believe a musician’s best work is rarely their first album.1 I cannot say for sure which album ever is the best one, as it changes for every musician. But the first always lays the groundwork. The “let’s just get this out and see where this goes” piece. The anchor and roots for where the artist can expand themselves. It is always interesting to see where an artists’ musical journey will take them as they explore beyond their initial release and grow within themselves.

wave to earth is a three member band integrating indie rock, jazz, and lo-fi pop genres into mid-tempo songs for easy listening, thematically drawing on various emotions from life. With their first two EP albums released in 2020, the band spent time building their base and promoting their work before their first full length album, flaws and all, came out last year. The first two EPs serve as a sound board of sorts for the band — a bit more bare bones due to there only being 2 members on the first album, a bit more simplistic and experimental with which exact sound they would go for, exploring both upbeat styles and moodier vibes. flaws and all brought the band’s work together in a way that explored various sides of love and heartache, with musical maturation.

Their latest release, play with earth! 0.03, is arguably their first narrative album, piecing together the identity of the band in a short story that brings together the various emotions that come with embarking on a journey as musicians facing the limelight for the first time.

“…location, for many of us, in the narrative of the human. What Brecht says about European proscenium theatre is pertinent to music: ‘Its story is arranged in such a way as to create “universal” situations that allow man with a capital M to express himself: man of every period and every colour.”

-Amit Chadhuri, Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music

The album does not get bogged down by strict adherence to a narrative structure, yet each song is approachable easy to listen to while the album all together flows in a way that creates a meaningful story. There is a sense of the band’s past longings and desires that built up to create their present state. It is interesting that there is a slight sonic reference as well to last year’s flaws and all, which featured a Side A/Side B LP structure, with brighter, pop rock style songs on Side A and more jazz influenced heavy songs on Side B.

play with earth! takes these nods to previous albums and themes, with a more refined and deeper sound, and encapsulates a musical step forward for the band on what hopes to be a prosperous journey and a long career. This album feels like a step forward to creating a full band identity. While each song calls to mind previous works in the band’s discography, each song still feels fresh and new. The musicality is deeper, richer, and draws more on the roots and sensibilities of the rock and jazz genres the band members grew up and trained with.

While many artists these days lean into the lo-fi sensibility and trend, it is always a question as to how an artist will sustain that genre and keep it interesting over the course of their career. As an album, play with earth! shifts the musical identity of the band slightly away from the trendier lo-fi pop elements, and brings the band back into their trained genres of rock and jazz, yet keeps the spirit of the band alive. Perhaps it is the richness of the music and the instrumental layering, or the clearer style of mixing that makes different parts of these songs shine — there’s a subtle difference and crispness of genre and sound that really resonated with me on this album.

(I’ll be sharing all songs on this record as there is a visualizer for each song that isn’t the main single)

The opening, are you bored?, is a bright and breezy instrumental track that starts with an acoustic guitar and builds up to drum layers with electronic elements under a jazzy saxophone melody. Admittedly, while the song is light and enjoyable, I think this track serves more of a live performance purpose than a proper album intro. Although it combines all of the genre elements that embodies the band identity, the song doesn’t flow exactly into the next track seamlessly. However, as a standalone track, it does pull from all other parts of the album in a way that creates a brief summary of where the album will go.

This first single, play with earth, immediately felt like a quintessential summer wave to earth song. With similar musical and lyrical themes to tracks on their second mini album, summer flows 0.02, play with earth is an up beat pop style song that will be a fun track to dance along to at a concert.

Lyrically, the song also combines various themes and imagery of previous tracks, encapsulating a sort of self referential overview of the group (cited below per my own interpretation and reference points).

Uhm, something’s goin’ wrong
Our days are so long,2
It feels like we don’t belong

Just leave this world behind
We’ve still got so much to feel

Everything is ours
The shimmer of the waves
Echoes like our dreams,
And we just embrace the flow3
Playing with the Earth, you know
In this endless glow4

The second single on the album, Annie, is a cute nod to rejecting the pressures of society to be something you are not. The title itself is a play on words - while in English the band chose to use a name, in Korean the name also sounds like the word for no (아니).5 That subtle yet cute touch to balancing the forceful message of the song with a laid back styling

The lyrics of this song were so timely. With the band’s pretty fast rise to popularity online and increased touring (and festival) schedule, alongside the current media landscape where people feel free to break boundaries of artists, Annie is a fun approach to telling people off while exploring their own personhood. The upbeat nature of the song and forceful yet awkward Fuck You in the chorus makes it fun and easy to listen to while still conveying the message.

You'd call me a loser, oh
"Why won't you compromise?"
I'd rather give you an F

Fuck you, I am saying
No, I wanna stay
With no subtle change
No lies over me

No, I wouldn't be ashamed
'Cause I already have
Everything for me

(I also wrote about the general subject of this song more in depth in my last newsletter re: Chappell Roan - you can read it here if you have not already.)

Pueblo has been a long standing fan favorite song. Originally released in 2020 as a standalone single, the remastered song serves as narrative shift in the album. I am curious as to whether the band had always planned to include this in a future album when it was released, or if it ended up serving well to add it into the story of this one as the project came together. I love the narrative shift this song provides for the album. Connecting the sentimentalities of the two album halves, pueblo acts as an anchor for the entire album. Musically, it serves as a good bridge between the upbeat songs in the first half of the album, and the slower paced more groove based songs in the second half.

‘i’ll never get lost’
‘I’m sure there's a lot of fun out there.’

But there’s nothing left
streets full of ruins and rubbish
I walk a little longer and lie down.
Is there anywhere else I can go?

Conceptually, the lyrics set up the narrative of the speaker embarking on a journey from their home. Near or far, they’re leaving to set out on unchartered paths while throwing away all they used to know. It thematically relates to many of the experiences the band is currently facing - meteoric rise in online popularity, immediately selling out tours globally, increased demand for appearances and output. It can be a pretty jarring experience to suddenly undertake a rigorous global tour schedule while putting out self made self mixed music, and trying to find some semblance of yourself.

Thematically, this song is a perfect follow up to Pueblo. It leans further into the alt-blues genre, and lyrically explores returning home after a failed attempt at the speaker trying to achieve his dreams.

There is a lot of musical texture in this song that really stands out to me. Various guitar layers create interesting reference points throughout the song, until the guitar break at the end of the track that really hammers home the feelings and stylings of the track.

At the time of writing this, slow dive is my favorite track on the album. The slow groove bass line, the timbre of the guitar, the softness of the top line, all together create a beautiful sombre moment that sort of concludes the thematic journey of the previous two songs.

Show me after all the things broken,
The sky and the ocean trading their shades,
It feels like a slow dive

Can we just throw all of my pieces
Just don’t know how I can glue
But it’s slow, slowly shines for a while
Feels like I can stay forever here

Despite the downcast nature of the lyrics, paired with the music together there’s a sort of warm and picturesque feeling the song creates in my mind. The sort of song that makes you envision a portrait of lights and hues and colors, yellows and muted brown tones, converging in a way that provides comfort despite the troubled feelings it is conveying.

While thematically different, this track felt similar to the band’s popular ballad track seasons. More so than the fact that they are both ballads (which sonically seem rooted in spirituals), I think both tracks convey the delicacy of yearning and desire in different yet similar ways. Both play with the hollowness of the music, lightly layering in instrumentals that accompany the melodic top line. Yet, seasons, rooted in a broken love, stays within itself musically.

holyland, on the other hand, builds up each instrument meticulously with every verse, up to the vocal and instrumental layering in the bridge that creates an immense whirlwind of emotion that is almost hypnotic. That moment of considerable elevation before the song drops back down to the more melancholy simplistic instrumental truly makes the song and creates a resonance to close out the album.

While the lyrics are presumably rooted in a speaker lost from his spirituality, I find them to be general enough to resonate in many ways depending on the listener. The last part of the story building up from the previous three songs, this final track lingers with the listener a bit. The musical and lyrical resonance may be different for each listener, though I am left with the question of what is the next step? Where do we go next on this exploration?

When I first heard the band’s first full length last year, I wondered where they would go in sound development. As much as I enjoy that album, I pondered over what would be next and how they would expect to develop. It was a foundational point in their career, but would it serve as the peak? (Probably not, based on my aforementioned musings on first albums). Especially as members participated in other solo6 and band7 projects, I questioned where they would take this sound and how they would progress as artists. There tends to be more fullness to their music in live performances as well, and I had always hoped to see that in the recordings.

play with earth! as an album that brings that robustness to the table, and is the beginning of more, I think. The beauty is in the subtleties and refineries of the tracks, rather than anything being stand out or grandiose. The band weaves in their journey and identity with their signature easy listening style of music in a way that is gentle yet intentional, while exhibiting musical depth and progression. While it is nice to see the band lean into their musical beginnings and create complexity within their own work, it is also promising to envision where the band will continue to grow on their journey.

Thanks for tuning in.