THE NINTH WAVE have announced details of their second full-length album ‘Heavy Like A Headache’, due for release on 11th March 2022 via Distiller Records.

The album follows their 2019 debut ‘Infancy’ and last year’s Faris Badwan-produced EP ‘Happy Days!’ – both of which were shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year award.

The upcoming fifteen-track album was produced by the band before being mixed by Max Heyes (Massive Attack, Primal Scream).

Today they’ve also shared a new track from it, ‘What Makes You A Man’. Exploring issues of consent, it pairs Millie’s deeply personal lyrics with a heavy, lurching instrumental that seethes with defiance.

Speaking on the release, the band’s Millie Kidd 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.”

Listen to ‘What Makes You A Man’ below, and check out the tracklisting for ‘Heavy Like A Headache’ below.

‘Heavy Like A Headache’ tracklisting

1. Intro
2. Maybe You Didn’t Know
3. Heron On The Water
4. Interlude
5. Hard Not To Hold You
6. These Depopulate Hours
7. The Morning Room
8. Everything Will Be Fine
9. These Depopulate Hours (Reprise)
10. What Makes You a Man
11. Piece and Pound Coins
12. Heavy Like a Headache
13. Pivotal
14. Some
15. Song for Leaving

Photo by Yaël Temminck