The British guitar outfit’s third – another ambitious, alternative project – sandwiches classic indie-pop between gutsy art-rock experimentalism Courting’s art-rock has never stuck around in one place long enough to be concerned with heading a genre, but it’s always been informed by the direction of modern pop: where debut ‘Guitar Music’ introduced the Liverpool-based four-piece as avant-garde, industrial electronic-rock connoisseurs, sophomore record ‘New Last Name’ ditched this USP, instead diving head first into hyperpop-tinged alt-pop. This confounding genre-blurring and tendency for whiplashing genre-hopping is nothing short of auteurship and, frankly, a deft pen for a tune. READ MORE: Courting: “We’ve balanced our love of pop songs and more experimental stuff” But on their third, the mouthful ‘Lust For Life, Or: How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’, Courting return with a ready-made indie classic far headier and confluent than anything put out so far.
Made with “less overthinking” and far more immediacy, so says press material, the record sees Courting’s sound intuitively draw its own path: naturally dropping colourful alt-pop and turning to indulgent Kasabian -indebted electronica, pub rock and proto-punk. Introducing their third record, vocalist Sean Murphy-O’Neill shouts over ‘Stealth Rollback’, “It’s ‘Lust For Life’! / Live in stereo!” , capturing a very specific Oasis -era Britpop .
