In case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere then you might have sussed that Hull is flying the flag for City of Culture this year. A cause for celebration and also a cause for showing people where Hull is – which is more than just on the bloody BBC weather map. Popular Music is a sneering, deriding rant that aims at two targets: putting Hull’s music firmly on the map and making socially aware observations. It successfully puts fists through both bullseyes.

LIFE have strived for this position for a heck of a long time though, it’s no quick somersault into success. Emerging from previous bands such as The Neat, LIFE have rocketed around the UK music scene since 2013, spinning out early singles in the forms of ‘Money’, ‘Take Off With You’ and ‘Crawling’ – there’s no denying the band haven’t earned their stripes over the course of four or more years. This hard work soon paid off when the quartet earned the spot cracking the support whip on tour with Slaves at the back-end of 2016, ultimately crashing into a fantastic 2017 packed with national radio spins, a Maida Vale session and this, their debut LP.

Throughout the album, the band point toward an array of influences, falling between the likes of Magazine with the furious bundle of energy that is ‘Go Go Go’ – an incensed number that possess the manner of a child battering a highchair – and The Fall, demonstrated with the brilliantly scathing post-punk march of ‘Earthworm’. Wrapping poetics within music is something that frontman, Mez Green, and his brother, Mick, have done since the toddler days of LIFE and something that gives the album an entire other world on intrigue. The tail end of ‘Earthworm’ catches the band at their most socially aware, issuing a warning: “The future is unethical, the past is just a lie, these are vampire times we live in, where the present leaves you dry.”

Moving between newer material and re-working past tracks, for example with ‘Beautifully Skint’, brings a coherence to their sound which perhaps wouldn’t have existed so much had they stayed the same. ‘Beautifully Skint’ being a mellower re-working of ‘Take Off With You’ adds dynamic to the album, even allowing the quartet to touch upon another emotion (perhaps), than anger. 

The highlight of the album sits throughout the mid-rift, lying within the fuelled rage of ‘Electricity’ which captures a shift in song dynamic between the verse’s gliding melody and the no-holds-barred chorus. It’s a track that matches the Trump-scathing ‘Euromillions’ – which was fittingly released on inauguration day earlier this year. 

Album-titled track ‘Popular Music’ is a celebration for culture in general, it’s worked its way throughout their live sets for a while now and to anybody living back in Hull, it’s a number that celebrates the arrival of Saturday night at the Welly Club – a stone not too far thrown from Brighton's, The Haunt. On a more universal level, this club can be anywhere. It is a testament to the five-day working week culture but ultimately it lies closer to celebrating the six cheap double vodka-cokes that inevitably arrive by the witching hour on the weekend – “Totally off my face I listen to popular music” howls Mez.

The album sits between US punk and British punk – it swims in the same vein as the likes of The Buzzcocks with the fury of ‘In Your Hands’, The Orwells with ‘Rare Boots’ and Mission of Burma with the compelling earworm of ‘Ba Ba Ba’  – sure to be a hit encounter with security when wedged into live sets. The similarity between LIFE and the aforementioned bands is they too are a band who have a message, hell-bent on igniting something in youth culture once more. These are not groups who want to play for the fun of playing as such, but artists who want to play for the purpose of driving an ethos. 

Popular Music is a call to arms more than anything else, unafraid of what it wants and what it says. It’s an album that means a whole load to their home city of Hull and one that looks to throw a message-in-a-bottle of hope to the youth surrounding the rest of the nation, from Grimsby to Peckham and Carlisle.
Tom Churchill

Website: lifeband.co.uk
Facebook: facebook.com/lifebanduk
Twitter: twitter.com/lifebanduk