Falter/Wave’s new record commands attention by moving like memory: jagged, blurred, insistent. Every sound you hear is theirs alone, save for a final brush of ambient synth from Lindy Wise, a passing light at the horizon line. That brief collaboration feels like a spark after the storm, a reminder that even the darkest weather eventually clears.
The title itself reads like a riddle about recovery. Absence Without Proof suggests the silence that follows a collision, the body still tensed for impact. Proof Without Absence suggests the scar that outlasts the wound. Together, they hold a paradox anyone who’s walked through trauma knows too well: the vacancy you can’t explain, and the evidence you can’t erase.
The music lives inside that paradox. You Only Miss Me (When You’re Bored) aches in stereo, a song that feels scribbled in the margins of a police report: evidence, confession, and confession denied. Its melody hangs like cigarette smoke, curling into spaces you thought were sealed. Other tracks lean into shoegaze worship, carrying the haze and volume of late ’80s and early ’90s underground Britain. Falter/Wave play with distortion like it’s a second language, finding tenderness buried in static and volume.
This is post-punk without pretense, alive with atmosphere. It feels like walking home at three a.m., replaying every slight and mistake, only to laugh in the night air because somehow you’re still here. There’s beauty in the distortion, a crooked grace in the volume, and a tenderness that cuts through the noise.
The accompanying video is a fever montage: doll heads, fast cuts of performance, surreal flashes that feel both playful and menacing. Falter/Wave directed it themselves, with photography support from Nils Larson, and it suits the music: half trip, half testimony, abruptly over. Like the song, it’s messy in the right places, electric in its imperfections.
Watch below:
Absence Without Proof / Proof Without Absence is a strange diary, both bruised and glowing. It leans into its edges, offering proof that scars can hold their own strange light.
Listen to “You Only Miss Me (When You’re Bored)” below and order “Absence Without Proof/Proof Without Absence” here.
Follow Falter/Wave:
Or via: