Wax-Tree-Cast: Patience is a virtue as band release new EP

Music correspondent

Published 9th Oct 2024, 11:45 GMT

Updated 9th Oct 2024, 19:05 GMT

For guitarist and songwriter Blair Murray, who formed the group with singer and bassist Oolagh Hodgson, the past 12 months have been about building a support team. “It’s taken time, which I guess is fine,” he says. “What I sometimes find difficult is I’m trying to push all the time with the band, and the same with Oolagh, so things can feel like they’re a bit slow, but the cogs behind the scene are going, it just doesn’t feel like the fans see that.

“(A year ago) we signed with Blue Raincoat/Chrysalis with a publishing deal but we did it unmanaged, although we had a lawyer. It’s taken a year but we have got a good manager now and then he’s brought in a bigger team for us. It’s definitely moving in the right direction...I’m probably just too impatient,” he adds, laughing.

The lead single Straitjacket is, Murray says, a “catchy, poppy tune” about relationships that’s accompanied by a simple yet arresting video. “The idea came from the Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel video for Don’t Give Up,” he says. “I wanted a similar idea but I just thought instead of buying a straitjacket and dyeing it (Wax-Tree-Cast’s trademark) pink, I’ll be Oolagh’s straitjacket. I just thought it worked really well me not doing anything (other than holding Oolagh in an embrace as she sings).”

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The five-track EP arrived in mid-September and will be followed in the coming months by another single and EP, Entanglements To Affairs Part 2. “Then it’s going to be all drawn together on vinyl and CD,” Dunlop says. “We had an album but we basically wanted to break it into two halves and make it last a lot longer.”

A former member of the Manchester band Twisted Wheel, Dunlop is mindful of not giving away too much at once. “So many bands at our level put a great record out and it can go flat very easily,” he says, “so we just thought, let’s do two singles and split the album up into two EPs and it feels like it’s going to work. It feels like over the next months we can spread it out and create a buzz again.”

The first EP includes early singles Fizzed Up and Oliver Reed, while the second has another old single She, but remainder of the material is new. “I’m always writing anyway so there’s plenty of music always there,” Dunlop says. “The songs on these EPs are the ones that we’ve been playing live and the ones that the fans know, so I feel it’s wise to put those ones out, let people hear the recorded version and learn the lyrics to properly sing them at us at our gigs, and then have a physical (copy) of it and move on, like all bands do.”

Wax-Tree-Cast will launch the new EP with a gig at Hebden Bridge Trades Club – the very place where Dunlop and Hodson first met four years ago. “We’ve got a different session drummer playing with us, and funnily enough, he was playing in Oolagh’s band that night, so when we do the Trades Cub, it’s going to be a little reunion of the three of us,” Murray says.

Entanglements To Affairs Part 1 is out now. Wax-Tree-Cast play at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on Saturday October 12. https://wax-tree-cast.bandcamp.com/album/entanglements-to-affairs