LIFE, Squid, FEET and The Fourth Wave Of New Wave


LIFE performing at All Points East 2018 (Gary Mather for Live4ever)

LIFE performing at All Points East 2018 (Gary Mather for Live4ever)




As punk’s momentum abated it was replaced with an entirely new energy, one used by those who graduated from it into a tidal wave of competing movements, from Mod to new romantic, synth pop to roots reggae, heavy metal to soul and jazz.

Ironically however, what would turn out to be a key pivot was American: New York’s Talking Heads had stripped back the ostentation of disco and funk down to its very barest bones, using tribal rhythms and St. Vitus’ guitars, along with singer David Byrne’s freaky drawl, to create a string of albums – the apex of which was 1980’s incredible Remain In Light – that would remain as perpetually influential as Entertainment! or even (whisper it) Unknown Pleasures.

Forty years later, these are our parents and grandparents’ records but just as familiar, living ornaments in what’s felt like a vacuum for fans of their legacy. Guitar music, as it’s infrequently termed now, has been pronounced dead on dozens of occasions over these last four decades, and at Live4ever we’ve felt at times like those driving the cortege were almost right. But not now. In cellar bars and shoebox rooms, venues across the country are putting on shows by artists who are performing a resurrection without it being a conscious act: they care more about the noise than what makes it.

This defibrillation is a comeback like a ’68 special – and it demands to be heard.

Nobody shot a starting pistol or anything a couple of years ago, but if there was some kind of ‘big bang moment’ we’re now lucky enough to be caught in its halo, a shockwave of new musicians all doing it for art’s sake, for the laugh, or for tongue-in-cheek dreams of megastardom whilst still scraping the money together for a vegan sausage roll. It’s unfair, maybe, to pick specific acts out, but we’re going to do it anyway because this is, after all, our piece.

LIFE are a quartet from Hull with singer Mez and brother Mick both youth workers in the much-maligned city. They see first-hand the damage the government’s institutionalised cruelty does to those in society’s margins; whether directly or not this anger translates into music which, on their new album A Picture Of Good Health, is smartly furious, ear bending and full of the casual encounters and the constant grind that social media makes us believe doesn’t exist.

Formed at Brighton University, Squid began life as a vehicle for running a campus jazz night. Since then they’ve sprawled much further forward into a merry-go-round of post-rock, anaemic funk, indie hardscrabble and half a dozen other separate but together things that leave them in the middle of a fascinatingly tuneful soup: their Town Centre EP marked a compelling leap forward in dexterity and their debut album to come will be essential listening.

Don’t, whatever you do, call this a Britpop revival though: having that suggestion put to him recently, FEET singer George (AKA Jeep) simply replied ‘bullshit’. From Coventry, the quintet he fronts sport some oddly retro facial hair and are determined to ride the experience with chaotic live shows and songs about UFOs and accidentally drinking diesel purifier. Whisper it quietly, but their loose-limbed catalogue gives an impression of the Happy Mondays before heavier things took over; in being committed only to the buzz, they share some hedonistic DNA with them too.

Each of the three are operating out of each other’s orbits, if only by necessity. Other than BBC 6Music playlistings and a DIY ethos to doing what they do, none of them can be easily dumped into anyone’s focus group dynamic – but you’d reckon that they’d all likely baulk at having a Union Jack draped around them. This is 2019, after all.

Thrillingly, this spontaneous burst seems to know no limits, with many artists connecting to audiences who are rudderless, whether on the hunt for experiencing the sonic blastscapes of black midi, the ensemble skronk of Black Country, New Road, or the streetwise jabs of Working Men’s Club.



All this isn’t taking place in a petri dish either: across the Irish Sea lurk The Murder Capital, Girl Band, Bats and punk poets Fontaines D.C., a doppelganger pool of equal and opposite creativity with the altered perspective of a next-door neighbour.

So don’t hang a flag over it, don’t hashtag it and for god’s sake whatever you do don’t call it a movement. The old means of recognition no longer apply, and these are dots that can’t be joined, just zoomed in on and torn out of books and magazines and stuck up on your walls like it’s 19-something all over again.

It’s probably what it felt like back then. And these bands could be your life.

(Andy Peterson)


Learn More