Led by frontman Mez Green, the rising Hull-based outfit LIFE has long been anchored by their hometown: Hull’s geography, history and community has inspired them and their creativity — and with their forthcoming album North East Coastal Town, the band pay homage to their hometown and its people.
“Hull and the surrounding area runs through our DNA and has shaped us, weathered us, empowered us, embraced us and made us feel accepted,” LIFE’s Mez Green explains.
“North East Coastal Town is our love letter to the city. The album 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.
“It’s a reflective body of work dedicated to people and place and those that have always been there and made us feel like we belong.
Upon writing and recording this album it was important to us that this sense of belonging was also reflected in the album’s craft and therefore we used locally based studios, equipment, gear, and the community around us to establish what it means to belong in a North East Coastal Town.”
North East Coastal Town‘s latest single, the dance punk-like “The Drug” features angular bass lines, driving rhythms, Green’s punchy delivery and squiggling guitar lines paired with a rousingly anthemic hook and chorus. While sonically seeming indebted to Gang of Four and DFA Records heyday, “The Drug” is rooted in heart-on-sleeve earnestness.
“’The Drug’ is a love song. I wrote the lyrics in the cold mountains of Italy before taking them into the room with the band,” LIFE’s Mez Green says. “‘The drug I needed has always been here, the dug I needed has always been near‘ is, for me, realising that loved ones and those that love you, no matter where you are, can always be present. I’d never really believed this before and whilst this purity is at the lyrical heart of the song musically the band decided to inject flecks of dance, pop, harmonics, and dirty pulses to give the song drive, repetition and jerk-ability.”
Directed by longtime collaborator Luke Hallett and the band’s Stewart Baxter (drums), the cinematic features the band and a collection of artists and friends from Shirethorn House, a commune of artists, who have taken residence in the derelict building, located in Hull’s city center. The video has each of these individuals acting in a surrealistic fashion in front of some gorgeous setups.
North East Costal Town is slated for an August 19, 2022 release through The Liquid Label.
