The Lounge Society

There’s a swathe of creativity swirling through the culture-spheres, a coterie of popular music types who could be seen to epitomise 'collapso-rock'.

In an increasingly fragmented, atomised, compromised society seemingly bereft of belief and promise, all is not entirely lost. From the margins lies hope.

Once upon a time boundaries and definitions used to dictate and prevail, norms and standards hanging from history’s shadows resulting in what critic Simon Reynolds termed ‘record collection rock’: the practice of deriving and divining from a fixed repertoire of inspirations and influences. Arguably today, now, the present, the avenues of adventure have increased exponentially.

Cultural context has dissolved. Greater access to forms across the board has generated a melange of pollinated sounds. None more so on producer Dan Carey’s (Squid; Black Midi; Wet Leg; Fontaines D.C., to name but four) Speedy Wunderground ‘stable of deconstruction’ where a growing roster of studious souls are hell-bent on merging, melding and manipulating the very ideas of ‘sound’. A place and space where prose-pop meets placid-jazz, rock-opera clashes with junk-punk, anar-chic dub crashes into dispassionate Funk-Knows.

Following last year’s ‘Silk for the starving’ E.P. Hebden Bridge’s The Lounge Society up the ante with their debut album, ‘Tired of Liberty’. Recorded in two weeks in November 2021 it’s an energetic, frenetic, kinetic and yes, splenetic state of affairs. Politically charged polemics subtly discharged. Controlled rage disseminated dextrously. Ode-codes for the tilted generation. Textural healing.

Opener ‘People are scary’ sets the pace, an indie-skronk that settles down into a faltered state of the disunion redress, culminating in a Mark E. Smith-like no-name-shaming, delicate inflections on the vocals hinting at a bigger picture, a larger story: “I don’t know anybody in this room … nobody knows me in this room …”

The wiry and fiery ‘Blood Money’ launches straight in with the accusatory “All your lies are drenched in sarcasm” and closes with “You’ve got blood on your hands’. Once more, the object of ire remains unknown, but, we can all make educated guesses. Can’t we …?

The elliptic-curves and cryptic swerves continue: ‘No Driver’ is an electro-folk freak-out; ‘Beneath the screen’ is a rage against the obscene; ‘Last Breath’ is a defiant rebel (rou)sing-a-long; ‘Upheaval’ blindsides with its countryside & West Yorkshire honk; ‘Remains’ echoes early U2 before the pompous piety and hypocrisy set in. Very early then.

In 1981 in a vain attempt to draw taste lines in the face of increasing competition the New Musical Express released the C81 cassette, a collection (in conjunction with the leading independent record labels at the time) that collated all that it deemed progressive and ‘post punk’. The Lounge Society could fit onto that cassette and into that company with aplomb.

A quality debut album with something for everyone. Anything for someone. Everything for anyone.