Courting

“It’s deliberately very succinct and straight to the point,” says Courting’s Sean Murphy-O’Neill of the band’s latest, and third, album. “We wanted to keep everything incredibly direct – to hit everyone in the face and leave.” Lust for Life, Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story is an album full of dualities, contrasts and contradictions. It contains some of the most straight-up pop music the band have ever made, but it’s also arguably their most experimental work to date. It is fun and silly, peppered with in-jokes, references, and easter eggs, but it is detailed, deeply considered, and masterfully produced and mixed. “It’s meant to feel very contradictory and confusing but it’s also fully realised,” Murphy-O’Neill says. “It’s a real culmination of things. ” The album title may be a sprawling mouthful but it belies its contents, with this containing just eight perfectly considered and pristinely executed songs. “I’ve always wanted a big, ridiculous title,” says Murphy-O’Neill. “I love albums that have a very self-important vibe. Lust for Life is such an overused title but it’s a great one. It could be referencing so many things, from Iggy Pop to Lana Del Ray and maybe that’s kind of its whole schtick – it’s as equally as influenced by 70s proto-punk as it is modern pop. It just all melts together. Everything we do is like a collage. We just take all the things we like and blend them together.” This is what has made the Liverpool band – made up of Murphy-O’Neill, Sean Thomas, Joshua Cope, and Connor McCann – such a unique proposition in recent years. Over three albums and one EP in just three years, they have shown they can do unashamed indie bangers with as much flair as they can pull off jittery hyperpop or innovative electronic rock. “It’s equally gratifying to write something that is as big and stupid as it is to write something really weird,” says Murphy-O’Neill. “As a band we exist in those two separate worlds at the same time.”