The Lounge Society – Tired of Liberty review

The problem with being a next big thing is one of definition. A couple of decades ago it meant sitting on the verge of people paying to hear some of your music, now it could be all about getting in position to frig an algorithm, or blowing up on a platform entirely populated by those with zero emotional investment in what you’re doing.

In old school terms though The Lounge Society are in the jostle; the quartet are signed to ace producer Dan Carey’s Speedy Wunderground label and emerged from the same Pennine hills of Calderdale as Working Men’s Club and The Orielles, releasing their promising Silk for The Starving EP in 2021. 

Two weeks ensconced in Carey’s East London studio last November were enough to deliver Tired of Liberty, a suitably ambiguous title that relates in part to our evident to desire to give up more and more of our freedoms for a quieter life. As an echo of ejecting that way of thinking ten of the eleven tracks here were deliberately kept without concrete form until or near the sessions began, giving a spontaneous feel to the process.

Considering the ingredients it’s surprising that the finished product sounds so finished, if deliberately not so polished. Opener People Are Scary offers a nerve-riddled kick start whilst singer Cameron Davey opens up on anxiety, but then midway through the helter-skelter unexpectedly comes to a calculated halt – as if mimicking a dream sequence – before ebbing to a languid fade.

Getting listeners from one place to another so easily is for a debut album another surprising contour. Early single Blood Money, with its vibrant riffing chop and words about the fat cats and their corruption is in mode, but the following track No Driver features the minimalist electronic overtones once touted by New Order in their earliest incarnation. Shifting again, Beneath The Screen is a freestyled take on old school funk and garage rock, all within the total confines of two minutes and fifteen seconds.

That’s not to say that what the four piece have isn’t demonstrably worthy of the hype/nice things (Delete to point of view). Here the archetypal post-punk of Boredom Is a Drug and Last Breath rely though on the energy of young men who are supposed to let things flow, a diffidence that values feeling more but caring less.

The main event – whether the band wanted or engineered to be or otherwise, is closer Generation Game, issued originally as part of the label’s limited edition singles project, but since re-recorded. Proving what can be done when they allow themselves and their songs discovery, the chaos-just-reigned-in feeling sees Davey on the edge of a powerless mania as the rhythm section frees itself in waves, with the climactic vibe of unfulfillment an ending in itself.

That’s the problem with being the next big thing: The Lounge Society know that it doesn’t even know itself what it means anymore, so in the guise of Tired of Liberty have some music, some graffiti on your mental walls and a dash of northern millionaire’s something. That’s the big time, baby. That’s as much fame as is worth sacrificing anything for.