Today, Hull alternative four piece LIFE return with the announcement of their fourth studio album, ABSTRACT / NATURAL, set for release on 19 June via Launchpad+ in partnership with EMI North. The news arrives alongside the release of the album’s lead single ‘The Dollywaggon’; a striking reintroduction to a band writing with renewed freedom and conviction. Proudly independent and deeply rooted in community, LIFE are a tightly-bonded collective whose creative world has always extended far beyond their music. On ABSTRACT / NATURAL, that world expands further still.
Lead single ‘The Dollywaggon’ stands as a compelling entry point to the record as a whole. Built on razor-sharp guitars, swirling synths and lightning-quick, surgically precise drumming, the track finds frontman Mez Sanders-Green delivering near stream-of-consciousness reflections from a protagonist caught between escape and self-reckoning (“I never wanted to leave myself, but I’m leaving now”), and driven by a restless sense of adventure: “the placard reads right to roam, and the boy is roaming”. Written while Mez was walking the 193 mile UK coast-to-coast route, the song traces a physical and emotional journey from the West Coast, over the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, across the moors and finally home to the East Coast.
“‘The Dollywaggon’s universal theme is about letting go and moving on – new adventures and beginnings,” Mez explains. “I wrote the lyrics whilst doing a long distance walk, turning what I saw into characters and scenes. I like to think it sounds like a pulpy Northern-based western – cryptic placards, farmers hanging dead moles on chicken wire, phallic mountains, pikes and ridges, Mother Earth always winning. The middle-8 feels like a salute to the new. In many ways, the track became the blueprint for the whole record.”
That sense of movement runs throughout ABSTRACT / NATURAL. Characters rooted in folklore and landscape sit alongside reflections on fatherhood, freedom and personal evolution, forming a body of work that feels both intimate and outward-looking. The album began life not in a rehearsal room, but on the pages of a poetry book frontman Mez has been writing; a collection of musings on landscape, nature, love, acceptance and letting go. Hearing melodies embedded in his words, Mez began presenting fragments to the band as “wonky lullabies”, turning hills, ridges and landmarks into characters: Hen Comb, Pavey Arc, Sergeant Man, The Grey Friar and The Dollywaggon. From there, bandmates Stewart Baxter, Lydia Palmeira and Mick Sanders shaped the music around these narratives, instinctively weaving them into vivid arrangements that collectively present a fully-realised universe.
Produced by Stewart Baxter and Oliver Varga, mixed by James Kenosha and mastered by Stephen Kerrison, ABSTRACT / NATURAL was recorded at LIFE’s own studio in Hull (The Moon Factory); a space the band built themselves on the banks of the river and now run as a creative hub for emerging Northern artists. The result is LIFE’s most expansive and experimental work to date: story-rich, exploratory and beautifully rooted in a sense of place.
LIFE Live Dates (instores):
June
23 – Brighton, Resident
24 – London, Rough Trade East
25 – Liverpool, Jacaranda
26 – Leeds, Jumbo Records
For more information on Life please check their facebook and instagram.