It seemed like an outlier at the time, but released just over two years ago, W. H. Lung’s first album Incidental Music felt very much like an artist’s record, which is to say one made as much for the enjoyment of the players as the audience.
Since then there’s been a glut of music which has placed expression over commerce, however the band – whose nucleus is Joe Evans and Tom Sharkett but who have now expanded to a five-piece – still see themselves as very much scene-agnostic, both by choice and design.
Given how the last two years has played out it would’ve been understandable for the Mancunians to hunker down around an acclaimed chassis that incorporated psychedelia, krautrock and even echoes of their city forefathers The Chameleons, but instead – and deliberately – Evans and co. have changed course.
This was in part because the musical epicentre of creativity and diversity in the north of England has now shifted some 20 miles east of their home city to the unlikely setting of the Calder Valley.
Home to a network of bands who’ve thrived at venues such as The Trades Club at Hebden Bridge and Todmorden’s Golden Lion, Evans and Shackett agreed it was the ideal place to relocate to whilst writing material radically different from the past.
The change is apparent from the first seconds of opener Calm Down, the pattering synths brooding slowly under a falsetto, although the interminable wait for a release is never truly satisfied. They seem to know what’s to come is good; keeping the listener waiting like that is the mark of an outfit with confidence that everything to follow is worth it.
Accordingly, Gd Tym’s post-punk, leaning heavily on Imperial period New Order, delivers for thrill seekers, the voice amongst the rave sirens crying, ‘Gimme your pleasures/I need good good good’, bouncing off mirror balls everywhere and showering everyone in a minor sun. In this moment, we have arrived.
Or at least in part.; Evans has spoken of a yingish darkness in these songs to offset their hedonistic yang, a balance he says reached by losing the fear of sadness itself.
Throughout this leaves music poised between totally letting go and remaining in that moment, no less so than on the throbbing techno of Pearl In The Palm, a tune both primitive and mindful at the same time.
Like a box full of the pieces from different jigsaws, unexpectedly different forms come from over these widened horizons. Figure With Flowers strays towards the American-80’s lite emoting of Foster The People, whilst Somebody Like – about learning to reconcile with yourself and not keep receipts – has much more substance, a rash of filters and floor-ready beats that serve to emphasise just how far the quintet have come, even if they only had to drive a handful of junctions down the M62 to get there.
Brains and beats then. But if it’s meant to make you feel, how does it make you feel? Well, torn between things; for instance, when they’re done Ways Of Seeing, ARPi and the closing near-seven minutes of Kaya leave a residue of half fulfilled emotions, a state that lies somewhere between ecstasy and emptiness, like there’s always another corner to turn.
On Vanities, W.H. Lung have made their relationship with their music and themselves porous, a thinner membrane anyone with the will can now push through to. It’s foolhardiness or bravery, but in either case it’s a risk that deserves to be rewarded.
