Courting’s third album Lust for Life Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ is a bold statement of intent – eight tracks that balance unfiltered immediacy with meticulous craftsmanship. Straddling pop’s brightest hooks and the experimental fringes of rock, the Liverpool four-piece push their sound further than ever before, embracing duality and contradiction at every turn.
From the chaotic pulse of “Stealth Rollback”, which crashes through industrial noise and frenetic rave energy, to the anthemic, sun-drenched indie of “Eleven Sent (This Time)”, every track is meticulously placed within the album’s symmetrical structure. The two-part title track “Lust for Life” twists from eerie, Berlin-era Bowie atmospheres into a spiralling, auto-tuned tale of a credit card scam, encapsulating the album’s knack for defying expectation.
“It’s meant to feel very contradictory and confusing but it’s also fully realised”, Murphy-O’Neill explains. “Everything we do is like a collage – we take all the things we love and blend them together.” That ethos extends beyond sound, with the album artwork’s black-and-white motif, twin figures on a motorbike, and symmetrical tracklist all reinforcing the record’s themes of duality.
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