Fresh off the back of a support slot to Wet Leg, Fontaines DC and The Strokes, Speedy Wunderground’s The Lounge Society share their debut album ‘Tired of Liberty’. Produced by the label’s Dan Carey, this record finds the young West Yorkshire band trying to make sense of a divisive world and championing those who are put upon while also opening up about the fragility of the human mind.
The appropriately titled ‘People Are Scary’ opens the record with Foals-style guitar work and handclaps that give way to more out-there melodies and plenty of twists and turns as the band open up about feeling adrift: ‘I don’t know anybody in this room, nobody knows me in this room’. The ferocious ‘Blood Money’ follows with the stark warning to ‘Stay young and watch our futures growing old’ before waves of guitar come crushing in against the repeated words ‘You’ve got blood on your hands’ and the strapline that could well be the UK government’s manifesto come next election: ‘Money, it takes priority’.
‘Beneath the Screen’ has more of a jangly sound to start, with a baroque pop undercurrent, before turning into something more scuzzy while ‘North Is Your Heart’ settles things down with soothing guitar hooks and darkly tinged lyrics about thunder coming: ‘You’re searching for purpose’. ‘Last Breath’ sits neatly alongside the likes of Life and The Murder Capital with its hypnotic and defiant mantra about mortality – ‘I will spend my last breath singing’ – while ‘Boredom is a Drug’ takes the album into a more glitchy soundscape with danceable moments backing up the imposing words: ‘You don’t feel it. You don’t want it’.
‘It’s Just a Ride’ is another spiky and breezy anthem with repeated vocal delivery of the words ‘grounded and untouchable’ akin to Peter Doherty and the closing ‘Generation Game’ is an almost spoken-word rally against the state of the right-wing British press and its negative influence on so much of the population – one that can be summed up by the statement: ‘Who cares anyway as long as we’re OK’. It also draws parallels to how these same people will look to our neighbours across the border, blissfully unaware the same issues are surfacing here: ‘What will the US do?’
The Lounge Society may be tired of liberty, but you won’t get tired of this album. It offers a biting snapshot of an imperfect country and the attitudes that run through it – often inspired by those at the top…
