Courting are tricky buggers to pin down, notoriously genre hopping as their mood changes, and album number three continues this trait. Even the album’s title of Lust For Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ confirms a reputation for wilfulness.
As the album progresses it seems to settle down a lot and Courting (Sean Murphy-O’Neill – guitar/vocals; Sean Thomas – drums/vocals;
Josh Cope – guitar; Connor McCann – bass), start to emerge as fairly straightforward indie rockers with hints of Yard Act and Kasabian running through their songs.
Things don’t start off this smoothly, though. Lust for Life… trips us up with not one but two false starts. Opening track Rollback intro is 48 seconds of fiddle playing that gives us worry that a Mumford type of direction might be on the cards. While we are trying to get our heads around this, Stealth Rollback comes along and boxes us around the ears with an indie/ industrial assault.
Clearly Courting aren’t here to make things easy for us.
The band kick things off properly on track three, Pause At You, which is a taut funk workout that puts me in mind of the wonderful Pottery. Upbeat and energetic, Pause At You feels like the proper entry point into Lust for Life… and is just crying out for a Later slot if Jools and his producers are keeping up with things.
Namcy carries things on in a similar vein, replacing funk with a muscular indie rock, complete with a chorus and crunching guitars that seem destined to tear the crowd up this coming festival season.
Eleven Sent (This Time) takes a gentler approach and is almost a straight ahead pop song, albeit one fed through Courting’s knack for writing crowd pleasing indie anthems. The song’s feel and its harmonies display a little of a Beatles influence or perhaps Teenage Fanclub’s knack for an easy melody.
After You is not as polite as the title may make you feel, but is instead a distorted rhythm driven blast of a song. Not for the first time I wonder what these songs would sound like live, stripped of some of the studio restraint. It may be that Courting make 2025 their own when they hit the road. They certainly have the raw materials here to do so.
Courting - Lust For Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ Lust For Life is up next and takes us in a completely different direction. A slow drum machine pulse and minimal bassline do indeed put us in mind of Berlin era Iggy, but Murphy-O’Neill’s vocals and some melodic keyboard work turn this into something approaching a tender ballad. A moment for their audience to gather their breath and turn to their neighbour for sweaty but much meant hugs.
It gathers pace about halfway through and becomes more Courting-ised while still maintaining it’s motorik Iggy feel and then skips into a lighter funk workout and the spirit of Yard Act raise their heads again.
It could be said that Lust For Life (the track) sums up Courting in one neat package. Clocking it an almost six and a half minutes it gives the band chance to play around with their sound and to spread their wings a little. Questions will be asked about its split personality approach – is it one song or several spliced together for the sake of being willfully odd?
Personally it is my album highlight and showcases Courting’s strengths to great effect, but it is easy to imagine some people scratching their heads at this approach.
Likely Place For Them To Be is a worthy album closer, featuring a Mansun-style riff and again conjuring images of festival crowds pogoing frantically. Funk again seems to be never far from the surface here and this is to Courting’s benefit as it keeps them firmly on the dancefloor.
The album finishes as it starts, with frantic fiddle playing taking us back to the start, which is a nice touch.
When they determine to just play their songs, Courting are a powerhouse rock band who should be able to claim their rightful place at the top table before too long. The question is will their propensity for fannying around get in the way of this?
I suspect not and I further suspect that Lust For Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ will be the album that moves Courting up the ladder of success a good few notches. It will be interesting to see what they do when they get there.
Lust For Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ is out now via Lower Third. Purchase here.
One reply on “Courting: Lust For Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’”
[…] Courting est un groupe britannique qui se distingue par son approche éclectique et énergique de la musique choice [2]. Leur nouvel album, « Lust For Life, Or: How To Thread the Needle And Come Out The Other side To Tell The Story », témoigne de leur créativité et de leur capacité à repousser les limites stylistiques [2], [3]. […]