The Ninth Wave announce second album with new cut "What Makes You A Man"

"What Makes You A Man" is the group's third outing of 2021, following September's "Piece and Pound Coins" and July's "Maybe You Didn't Know", all of which will feature on The Ninth Wave's Heavy Like A Headache album with last year's "Everything Will Be Fine".

The Ninth Wave's Millie Kidd says of the new single, ""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," Kidd continues. "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?"

Kidd adds, "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."

Heavy Like A Headache will follow the band's 2019 debut LP Infancy, and is produced by the band themselves and mixed by Max Heyes (Massive Attack, Doves, Primal Scream).

Tracklist:

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