A Magical Poignancy

Neil Jones on Life Without Buildings' Live at the Annandale Hotel

My first memory of Life Without Buildings was hearing them pulsate out of the radio one evening on Steve Lamaqq. It was about 9.30 at night, when he had maybe satisfied his audience with enough of the usual suspects to unleash something good. 'PS Exclusive' was an absolute revelation, and I had a defective tape player on which I taped it that would play it at an even more frenzied pace, accentuating Sue’s fantastic stream-of-consciousness vocals and the corporeally concise rhythms.

My second LWB experience was walking into a record shop and buying the Any Other City record, the third the gig that followed soon after (the best one of my life), which I spent with a couple of people who were little short of insulted at what they saw. Needless to say it became a defining experience, and for the next six months or so Life Without Buildings took up a residency on my stereo. Everything else at the time (and at that point I was taping all my music off Peel), except maybe Hefner, paled in comparison in what became a kind of dizzy obsession, and now, six years later, a CD and letter drops out of an envelope like an atom bomb.

Memories and feelings are stirred with each rhythmic twist and each bit of lyrical dynamite of Live at the Annandale, tempos breaking into shards and gathering back together to knock you off-balance, wholes breaking into parts and parts into sheer euphoric pop moments, fragile explosions of utter emotion in the psyche. There's ‘Let’s Get Out’, developing out of childlike wonder that puts you at total ease, minimalist guitar hooks trickling forever in the background before the pirouetting riposte of “Look back and say that I didn’t” grips like a vice. There's 'Juno', taking off on a robust show of guitar and drum rhythm before Sue strews it into fragments and gathers it back together with her “are you real, shy kid?” exhortation, and ‘Love Trinity’, coming out of serene bass into slow percussion and a blindingly emotional guitar line before Sue gives it that wondrous vocal kick, total euphoria accompanying her repeated lines of “and you’re just like me” as the rhythms form a starry crescendo.

Pop as moments indeed. There’s ‘The Leanover’ and its sideways whirl of blinding, obtuse sentiment, and 'Sorrow', a total change of tempo that speaks in an entirely different, more direct voice, humbling, charming and magically poignant, Sue singing of beautiful people slipping away in a manner that makes me melt on the spot.

Coming with a sleeve evocative of unlikely grandeur, Live at the Annandale is Life Without Buildings in their sheer prime, a prime in which they were too good to be anything more than an underground cult, and a prime they jumped off on in the noblest punk spirit. It’s another vital document to add to their small legacy, and one that rattles my heartstrings in swirling waves.

© 2007 Neil Jones

© Miwsig