LIFE – North East Coastal Town

By RingMaster Review on September 14, 2022 • ( 0 )

As Summer moves into Autumn, it is also for many the coming of the season where thoughts start stirring to contemplations of best of year consideration with still plenty of time to add new pleasures and adventures to the list of propositions. 2022 has been a year of a great many imagination twisting and igniting proposals with new exciting exploits still emerging almost by the week…so North East Coastal Town the new album from UK outfit LIFE…

Major and commanding contender is the only way to describe the Hull hailing band’s release, an encounter which stopped us in our tracks and provoked the kind of pleasure and excitement which have often but not necessarily frequently mark out specific stand out moments in our personal musical journey as a devourer of sound. We will admit that LIFE had evaded our ears even with two previous praise laded albums to their name in the shape of 2017 debut Popular Music and A Picture Of Good Health two years later, proving how hard it is for any band acclaimed or awaiting recognition to find the full awareness deserved. Now finally we are at their door and we can only think we have been missing out big time.

The band’s sound is a virile fusion of post punk, alt rock and new wave fuelled punk rock and plenty more. As North East Coastal Town proves it is a proposition which is as cunningly unpredictable as it is creatively mischievous and inescapably absorbing, with every track within the release a host of surprise and skilled temptation. The album itself, in the words of frontman Mez Green…“is an ode to kinship and relationship with its musical and lyrical spine picking out themes of love, desire, beauty, horror, chaos, pride and most importantly the sense of belonging.” and in regard to their Yorkshire home “This album is our love letter to the city.”

It is a connection which also unites with the intimate instincts of the listener and from the moment album opening Friends Without Names launches the captivation it was hard to not feel an organic union between ears, passions and their boldly individual creativity. The song immediately drew ears with its alluring monotony flirting bassline and crystalline jangle of guitar, an invitation soon expanding its tempting and continuing to mesmerise with its post punk drawn drone courting nag. Similarly, Green’s tones have a dark listless lilt, a magnetic call upon ears and thoughts around the melancholy of departure.

It is a hypnotically compelling start to the release, a striking beginning which Big Moon Lake continues and escalates with its Three Johns meets The Fall-esque swing. In every aspect the track surged under the skin, its post punk rhythmic manipulation and evolving drama of invention a transfixing itch with its raucous uproar an inescapable call to participation even as its anxiety swamped song and senses.

Together, the first pair of tracks forged an acrophobia taunting peak which is never surpassed but persistently touched as proven by next up Incomplete. The song moves in with the gait and breath of a stalker, increasing that infectious persecution with its web of hooks, rhythmic taunting and vocal devilment. It too has an inherent swing which commands the body, its animated contemplation as provocative to thoughts as the evolution of surprise within the song is to the imagination, an XTC lilt to the melodic finale irresistible.

Almost Home instantly had movement and attention under its control, the track another prowl disguised as a saunter with expectation chasing twists and flirtations to its sinister captivations while Duck Egg Blue weaves a melodic fascination within a chilling rhythmic cavern. Guitars and vocals cast a haunting romance of the senses yet within a shadow courting crepuscular atmosphere. It is a dark and increasingly ominous beguilement which leads to the portentous air and sinisterly animated Shipping Forecast. Again bass and drums trapped our instincts ready for further submission to the track’s sonic and vocal tempestuousness, the outstanding encounter another tightly gripping dark sharing pleasure.

Through the likes of Poison with its angular incitement and rhythmic slavery and the feral alt pop ferocity of Self Portrait, subservience to the creative manipulation of LIFE deepened; the first track akin to the punk fury of Wire with its successor a bad habits stoking uproar while in turn The Drug brought further pop instincts to the band’s kaleidoscope of flavour and imagination, the song flirting with Arctic Moneys like infectiousness and forging its own chilled but warmly involving incitement.

The final pair of Our Love Is Growing and All You Are ensured the album ended as uniquely striking as it began, the first a seduction of spirited poppiness with indie vivacity and art rock dynamics with the second a haunted ballad of fascination and melancholic beauty but unsurprisingly spun with assumption twisting adventure and the inimitable invention of LIFE.

That is North East Coastal Town; an album which in individuality and imagination schools many of this year’s offerings and in sheer enjoyment goes to the head of the class.

North East Coastal Town is out now on the Liquid Label; available across most stores with links @ https://theliquidlabel.ffm.to/LIFE_northeastcoastaltown