PS Exclusive: Life Without Buildings

Posted by: zac | From: May 25, 2004

If there is one thing about music writing that you can count on universally—and this is speaking from a good deal of experience with this matter—its that music journalists are, on the whole, a fundamentally lazy lot. I'm the last person to fault them for it, as even in my brief time as a paid music writer, I became uniformally bored and disaffected by the inner workings of nearly all matters musical. And with week after week of sub-mediocre CDs piling up on your desk, publicists hounding you, and nearly everyone loathing you simply on the principal of your opinion—anyones birthright—it becomes easier to simply rewrite press releases with bad analogies and (less-than-)clever devices, replicating the names of influences the P.R. firm has chosen to bold in the little piece of paper folded up with your promo.

Which is the only thing that seems to explain nearly everything ever written about Life Without Buildings, a short-lived art school four-piece from Glasgow. Its so weird—so many reviews and articles that Ive read about the band (a number which, admittedly, is pretty limited) have said EXACTLY the same thing about them, and none of it really makes any sense to me. I suppose its a lot easier to just lump the band in with the recent brand of Post Punk revival—compare them to Television, Public Image Ltd., ESG, Gang of Four, etc.than to actually listen to the record, but I hardly hear an ounce of any of those bands in LWB. Post-Punk revivalists they might be, but its a different school altogetherspecifically, (as All Music Guide [I know, and Im sorry] so eloquently puts it) Rough Trades class of 1979. Frontwoman Sue Tompkins is Mark E. Smiths lilting, rhododendron-soft antonym—hiccupping and sputtering in maddening repetition above a darting, jangly soundtrack that owes as much to the American Underground of the 80s as it does to the deified Brits.

Life Without Buildings formed out of the Glasgow School of Art in 1999, and were gone by September of 2002. In that time they released four singles and an LP, 2001s phenomenal Any Other City, and if Im not mistaken, never set foot in the states. One of the most promising debuts of the last few years, the bands break honestly effected me in way I sort of forgot such things couldpretty good for another one of those PiL rip-offs. You will be missed, Greatest Band of All Time.

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