The Lounge Society - Tired of Liberty

Though The Lounge Society can call bingo on UK guitar music’s most ubiquitous terms - ‘post punk’, ‘Speedy Wunderground’, ‘Dan Carey’ - ‘Tired of Liberty’ lands as an active attempt not to just play by numbers. It’s perhaps best to skip straight to track three (the ominously wailing ‘No Driver’) to truly clock the point. Where opener ‘People Are Scary’ chops and starts in fairly South London 101 fashion, and previous single ‘Blood Money’ echoes Shame’s ‘Concrete’ to a level where they could be related, ‘North Is Your Heart’ brings to mind the uneasy thrum of These New Puritans; ‘Boredom Is A Drug’ is scrappy and loose in all the right ways, while ‘It’s Just A Ride’ sounds like Orange Juice sped up by a factor of 10. It’s not even that the more ‘obvious’ (read: of a scene) tracks aren’t good. But The Lounge Society clearly have more in their influence pool than just one slipstream, and it’s when they embrace the full flood that they shine.