LIFE performing at All Points East 2018 (Gary Mather for Live4ever)
Changing jobs usually feels good.
For LIFE singer Mez Green and drummer Stu, this time it’s even more the case: over a pre-gig drink at the Hyde Park Book Club in Leeds this week, they tell us that they’ve both just left their old employers as part of the transition to focussing one-hundred-percent on the band.
This may seem odd, as many people outside of the creative arts see it ignorantly as some perma-grant funded haven for the workshy, but Stu is under no illusions: “We aren’t just playing a few songs in front of our mates now, this is our career,” he tells Live4ever. “It’s up to us to take the opportunity.”
For the quartet, it’s taken this sort of determination just to get here, setting up their own label in their home city of Hull and self-releasing a well received 2017 debut in Popular Music. Recorded over four weeks in London, its successor A Picture Of Good Health arrived last month to more widespread acclaim – vindication, the pair feel, for a bolder, more exploratory songwriting outlook.
“We didn’t just have a meeting and say ‘this is how we want it to sound’, we just made music,” says Stu. Both see the difference as being one of ambition rather than process: “We feel it’s expansive, and broad and exciting,” Mez explains. “People have embraced that and we’re very proud of this record.”
Much of the inspiration came from Mez’s struggles with single parenthood, the sense of isolation felt when spending time alone with his son, withdrawn from the outside world. Situations like these create the kind of mental health issues for artists which, both consider, are still to be seriously addressed by the industry. “There’s still quite a lot of old school ways of working around,” Stu says, referring to the wear and tear of touring, Mez adding: “When you arrive at a venue often the first thing you see is booze, which is great in moderation but you have to look after yourself and everyone else in the band.”
For Stu, there’s still the necessary hassle of having to fight for things like downtime: “There’s a lot of good management companies now, but the onus is still on the artist and they’re getting braver and asking for support, making people listen.”
The album’s profile has meant that their first major tour has so far been a success: “Europe’s been kind to us,” Mez explains. “Over here it’s not always the same but Manchester, despite being a Sunday, was sold out. As is tonight.”
And having got here through sheer graft and perseverance, they’re determined to provide more exposure for acts from home, an outpost which in A&R terms might as well be Camelot. Stu explains:
“It’s important to say that when you’re self-releasing it’s not a choice. There’s no labels there, no offers on the table. There’s a lot of amazing artists in Hull, but they struggle to get out. It’s like the industry doesn’t even know it exists.”
With this in mind, who should we be looking up? “We’ve got Newmeds touring with us in Scotland,” says Mez. “There’s a rapper called Chieda Oraka,” Stu adds, “and some lesser known bands like Low Hummer and The Hubbards are also doing well.”
Later, any uncertainty about going full-time seems absurd as Mez, his brother Mick, Stu and bassist Lydia, honed into an impossibly tight unit by hundreds of dues-paying nights up and down the country, are headliners in every sense of the word. The singer is on a roll any good frontman can’t escape from, dousing the crowd with affectionate chatter between songs, crap-miming during them, a passionate meta-Jarvis for the twenties that will soon to be upon us.
If their second album is a freer expression of their ideals than the first, the compacted nature of tonight’s manic set levels the playing field: the adrenaline rush of Half Pint Fatherhood, Excites Me and Good Health is shared with older songs like Ba Ba Ba, while Mez rails against leaving the young to rot, gives a shout out for his son and furiously dances like no-one’s watching.
On this evidence the timing of their leap into the unknown is near perfect. As they pile-drive through Moral Fibre and Popular Music – two sides of the same shit-losing coin for the pogoists down the front – it’s obvious that gate-crashing suits them, that underground beginnings shouldn’t limit anyone’s horizons.
Some might think they’re from nowhere, but soon LIFE could be everywhere.
