Album Reviews # 87 Life Without Buildings - Any Other City

 

Best album by an artist or band who only released one album? There are only really four or five contenders for me. Sure, The Sex Pistols and Jeff Buckley should be considered but frankly both have been so anthologised and lauded over time that it doesn't really feel like they only actually released one studio album. Lauryn Hill and Derek & the Dominoes too. But I'm not personally crazy enough about either record to go into raptures about them.

The La's I'll definitely give a nod. That's a cracking record. Only a couple of slightly lesser songs holding it back from true classic status. But really, there are only three for me in this particular category. Opal's Happy Nightmare Baby, David Roback's stepping stone from Rain Parade to Mazzy Star. Young Marble Giant's fabulous Colossal Giants. And this, Glasgow band Life Without Building's 2000 debut Any Other City.

This is a record that has come to seem more significant and just better in the twenty years plus now since it was initially released. It was given really very little attention at the time. Life Without Buildings came together with very few pretentions or career objectives when they started off, a couple of years before putting out the record.

Fronted by Sue Tompkins, a painter/ spoken poet, who in Pitchfork's words sounds like a kindergarten playground bully reciting her older sibling's copy of Horses from memory.' Meanwhile, the tradional guitar, bass and drums trio behind her take a similar freeform abstract approach. Melodic and solid but inventive and full of wonder at one and the same time. It sounds like four people making it up as they go along and just having one hell of a time while they go about it.

What's most notable about the record is that it sounds 'Post Punk', which was almost unprecedented at the time Any Other City came out. There had been plenty of pillaging from the past in the previous decade, from Screamadelica and Bandwagonesque onwards. Brit Pop had seen The Beatles and The Kinks songbooks merciless ransacked. And though Elastica had ripped off Wire and been obliged to settle out of court for doing so, their motives were largely Pop in terms of design.

Life Without Buildings pointed out a new way of looking back to go forwards. Their sound is identifiably Post Punk but it's not by any means derivative of any particular artist or artists. It throws open the Post Punk paintbox, takes its abrasive, scatchy, angular approach and paints a whole new picture with it.

I liked the record at the time, having been played it by my hip sister and brother in law. I love it now, so much so that I felt obliged to go out and get myself a vinyl copy, a few weeks ago, when it was re-released.It's altogether joyous. Even though its roots are clear, no record has ever sounded quite like it before or since.

Though plenty have tried. After The Strokes had shown a similar approach of mining a different departure point to make a new journey with Is This It? the following year, every Tom, Dick and Hamish began taking a similar modus opperandi. But few, if any of them came up with results as startling and exciting as Any Other City.

Life Without Buildings were gone before their record began to get the attention it deserved. It's become a small cult unto itself in the intervening years. Hear it. It still sounds incredibly fresh.