How I Became A Wave – Unitarian Church – 17/04/26 – Live Review
by Liam Griffin

HIBAW live at the Unitarian Church, Dublin | Friday 17 April, 8pm

The brilliant self-titled debut album by How I Became A Wave, a project led by former singer and guitarist of The Hard Ground, Pat Carey, was released on 27th March. In the Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green on Friday night, they performed a stunning eleven-song set in support of the new release.

Before How I Became A Wave took to the stage, Irish harpist Alannah Thornburgh, whose fairy folklore and mythology inspired compositions soared high above the altar of the one-hundred and fifty-year-old church, and Russian/Irish poet Polina Cosgrave, who shared poems of love, loss, and hope, established the mood. Then How I Became A Wave, featuring Carey on acoustic guitar alongside a drummer, a violinist, a cellist, and two multi-instrumentalists (one playing saxophone, clarinet, and keys and the other lap steel and electric guitar), made their entrance. They opened their set just as the newly released album does with the ethereal ‘You Always Had A Way With Words’ leading into the hypnotic ‘Zero Sum’ and then on to ‘Cycles’, the first How I Became A Wave single released, which saw the band in full flow. The fourth song of the evening was ‘The Stray’, and on it Carey’s voice shone and his tender lyrics, “‘cause nobody’s come, despite what I’ve done”, seemed to take on even more significance in a live setting than on the recorded version. Next up was ‘05:00’, a perfectly paced song, which was particularly affecting. In its quieter parts, it was just one of a number of moments during the set where you could hear a pin drop.

‘Sea Swell’ came next, which revealed the true extent of the rich and intricate tapestry that How I Became A Wave have woven throughout their compositions. Each instrument contributed in creating a cohesive whole much larger than the sum of its parts, which built toward a moving climax over which Carey sang “this feeling.” An unreleased song that Carey explained was about the Irish bent toward “negative appreciation” was then performed, but not before he joked that “it’s not about how good you are” in Ireland, “it’s about how not bad you are”, which lightened the mood somewhat after the stirring ‘Sea Swell’.

The third last song, the transcendent ‘The Underside’ – which features one of the most moving lyrics on How I Became A Wave, “the song of you is all the words I have to say” – was the highlight of the night, with the accompanying swelling strings taking the tune to even greater heights than it reached on the album. The penultimate song was a cover of Canadian singer-songwriter Feist’s song ‘The Park’ from The Reminder (2007) before the set closed on the fantastic ‘Fading Out’, which itself faded out after a climax which saw the band playing at its most powerful and Carey’s voice at its most gravelly. It was a fitting end to a memorable night.

The large and airy Unitarian Church on St. Stephen’s Green, with its high ceiling and red cushioned, dark wooden pews, was the perfect setting for How I Became A Wave to perform the songs that appear on the recently released self-titled debut. The rich textures and the layered, colourful, and considered arrangements of the songs had the space to breathe and to show themselves off in their best light when performed, overlooked by spellbinding stained-glass windows. The songs translated seamlessly to a live setting; in fact, they glimmered and sparkled even more than they do on the recorded versions, with the ambient and atmospheric soundscapes, which bolster the tracks being all the more powerful in person. Be sure to check out How I Became A Wave’s self-titled debut out now, and to get to a show if you can.