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Indie Rock Premiere Singles

Premiere: Last Waves’s “Wake Up”

Release date: February 21, 2020

Dan Ray February 21, 20201 Comment
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Premiere: Last Waves’s “Wake Up” February 21, 20201 Comment

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo by Monica Martinez

On Friday, Mar. 27, Last Waves releases its debut album, Only Now, with a release party at Belltown Yacht Club, with support sets from Rap Gho$t, Proud Dad, and a Biblioteka DJ set with DJ Hexx. Today, Dan’s Tunes is excited to premiere the first single from the upcoming record, “Wake Up.”

Last Waves was founded by vocalist and guitarist Alex Jones and drummer Ricky Peñalba in 2017, after their band of 10 years, Keaton Collective, disbanded. Wanting to take their rock sound into more mellow, indie-rock territory, the group recruited guitarist Kyle Swisher (of Mon Frere) and bassist Brice Ervin (of Breaks & Swells) and quickly began writing. One of the first tracks written by the group, “Wake Up” came together when Swisher paired a riff he had written with a groove Jones was playing that just happened to be in the same key. Ervin added a bass part, and the track came to life.

“Wake Up” starts with a softly plucked electric guitar melody, a steady bass undercurrent, and gently staccato snare. As the first 45 seconds tick by, you’re lulled into the track — it, quite literally, feels like you’re being pulled into your sound system as each repetition of the guitar line swirls between your ears, drawing an imaginary string at your forehead down into the mix. By the time Jones comes in with, “I don’t ever wanna wake up / I wanna stay in this dream all day,” you’ve already been with him for at least 25 seconds.

As the track creeps on, the sweetness of the guitar starts to drip in distortion, the drums crash harder, and the bass moves from a steady push to a simultaneously driving, yet laid-back force. At the bookend of the song — 45 seconds from the end — the instrumentals culminate in a two-second pause, built up to by a combination of harmonics from the bass and guitar that make it feel like your dream has turned into a nightmare, but your vision is still somehow overlaid by pleasantly psychedelic, gyrating tulips and daisies falling from the sky.

Written on November 9, 2016, the lyrics tell the story of Jones waking up to the news of the upcoming Trump era: “Ain’t never gonna give a chance / to a two-bit sucker in a suit / on a long con tip / you know you’ve been played.” “Wake Up” casts a raucous picture of the line between dream world and reality as the track moves from the bleary-eyed, morning stretches of the first 45 seconds, through the blinking world coming into view during the meat of the track, to a crash back into consciousness in the last 45 seconds.

Take a listen to the track below, and stay tuned for the full album, due out Mar. 27.

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Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

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