The Wake

Many months back I was asked by a fellow blogger friend to complete a five question survey that circulating to various Los Angeles based musicians, writers, djs... music nerds, essentially. Several times I sat down with this survey, and struggled with answering the questions to the inevitable point when I would put them aside and vow to return another day. Eventually, I stopped returning to the survey, and resigned myself to the fact that my take on these questions would remain absent from the series. The questions were so good that I couldn't form sufficient answers to any of them except for one: "Name one album you feel is critically under-rated and one album that is critically over-rated. Defend your case." I never settled on my pick for overrated album (though there were several knocking around my head for awhile). My pick for underrated album, however, was clear as day.


Here Comes Everybody was the second album from Scottish post-punk auteurs/indiepop forecasters the Wake. It's also, in my opinion, perfectly crafted start to finish. The opener is the almost impossibly lush and beautiful "O Pamela." The closer (and title track) is a long dark alleyway composed entirely of dub space and tension. Every song in between seems to have been designed to take the listener from that particular point A, to that particular point B. More importantly perhaps, you hear a band that is in line to some degree with certain Factory Records labelmates as well as other musical contemporaries, but clearly crafting a sound scape all their own.

There are plenty of bands whose under the radar status makes perfect sense to me; they make music for a specific type of person, and the more people who hear those songs and identify with them the better, but it's still pretty much implied that those people to be few and far between. The Wake on the other hand, deserve ten million more listeners, a constant barrage on the good people at LTM Records to keep churning out copies of their represses, and stadium shows... or at the very least a world tour.

Purchase the re-issue of Here Comes Everybody, Here Comes Everybody + Singles, here.


One of the singles that makes up the + Singles portion of the re-issue is the Hungry Beat! favorite "Talk About the Past." It could arguably be considered their best single. "Pale Spectre" (which also appears on Here Comes Everybody + Singles) and "Crush the Flowers" (from the Sarah years!) would be top contenders as well. But for right now, we should all give out wholehearted attention to "Talk About the Past," cause it's so pretty...



~ Marion