(2021) The Little Unsaid - Lick the Future's Lips


Review:
There’s a sense of contained energy pushing at the seams of ‘s Lick the Future’s Lips which was recorded over the course of a week in a London studio between lockdowns. That feeling reinforces the theme of impermanence that percolates through the songs, almost all written during a time of global crisis, the need to be fluid and flexible rather than constrained, to embrace life in the moment, in all its shades rather than hiding away from it. Appropriately enough, then, the opening track, the first line of which provides the album title, is called ‘Flux’. Tim Heymerdinger’s puttering drum pattern and nervy stabbing keyboard notes offer a hazed danceable backdrop to John Elliott’s quietly high pitched soft vocals as, capturing that sense of fluidity, he sings “I’m a man, I’m a woman/I’m a liminal mother of love” and of the possibilities of not being pinned by a fixed identity. Rippling electronics bubble away throughout the quietly spooked and ghostly Bug In Amber with its images of captured emotions, sensory memories and feelings with lyrics that journey from Berlin to Mexico City and Saigon and speak of rebirth, cleansing and renewal. By contrast, while still enveloped in a narcotic haze, Bloodlines with its circling guitar notes, brushed drums and percussive hits is a bluesier late 60s acid groove on a song that speaks to the state of the world and of the need to step up and work for change (“You’re living in a dream land/If you don’t see the rot/Sitting there with a fixed hand/On top of all the things you’ve got/It’s not enough to be half-awake/While the poison trickles down”). The first of the musically upbeat numbers comes with the 60s folk-rock Dylan-coloured marching beat and melody of The Great Nowhere with lyrics in a similar vein (“In the half-fantasised night-time/The harbour drunk on moonshine/There’s a sound of tragic wind chimes/Where the boats no longer cruise/My father’s voice comes to me/Between the stillness and the mystery/He says, ‘Don’t hit the brakes until you get free/And don’t get free until you’re tough enough to lose’”), the line “Eden rots on a shelf in a glass jar” again drawing on the imagery of land in decay and how “Mother nature’s gonna get square” unless the young generation steps up to the mark. There’s a raga feel to the beats of Limitless, another ethereal number of atmospheric pulses which, referencing Maranasati, a Buddhist meditation practice of remembering, builds into percussive intensity as, per the title, the lyrics expound on the potential beyond our confined frames. Then things get dramatic with New Year’s Eve, a wordy two-part number that begins with the skittering syncopated drums and spare piano notes underpinning the gradually swelling first section, which euphorically talks of being “ocean bound” and Elliot declaring “Plunge my hands/In the fire/There’s a light I’d die to reach” before the stately piano leads into the urgently semi-spoken second half where he’s caught up and enraptured and “We bound into that tangled forest of love/With moth wings for eyes… and we discover/All things all at once”, a transition of consciousness “into the starless swing of beyond” where we “wake early to the sound of nothing/And feel drunk on the wonder”. While touching on a similar idea (“The galaxies in you are endless”), by contrast, Act Of Vengeance is rowdy pop in the service of a protest about the “swollen suits and dream-dementors” with “their stone-cold lies”, a celebration of those who cranked up the revolution and lit the fuse with their songs and stories and that now it’s “high time a fresh breed took the wheel”, again a call for self-belief in the face of negativity and that “loving yourself’s an act of vengeance”. Things calm down for the piano-backed cathedral-toned, In Daylight, Mariya Brachkova’s synths pulsing a skewed love song of sorts (“You said, ‘Don’t drink the suffering/Of a world you won’t be in/I like you drunk on things we both still feel’”) that mingles shadows and light (“I’m dreaming up some bleak horizon/Where the sun is also rising/And the earth’s a mess of caved-in veins”) as it swells to a crescendo and quiet ebb. Ringing the musical changes once more, funky heartbeat pumping bass and sudden bursts of staccato piano drive along Some Miracle, a Peter Gabriel-esque return to the album’s earlier ghostly soundscapes with lyrics that draw on the imagery of the natural world for another song that finds hope (“The linden tree again in bloom”) beyond the darkness (“in the fungal trunk of a rotten year”), using the metaphor of a broken relationship (“I’m just calling to collect my clothes/Before I get back on the road”) as a springboard to renewal (“I’ll be damned/If we cannot make some miracle of this mess/While most try keep their spirits low/Your vertical illusions grow”). Marking a foray into Country-tinged pastures, the slow waltzing Half Alive, an earlier single, serves as the penultimate track with its wistful reflection on a lost relationship that sports a classic honky-tonk heartbreak-like line in “I’m not running for my future/I’m just running for my life” as Alison D’Souza’s viola takes the keening pedal steel role. Elliot cautions, “If you can’t outrun your history/You don’t stand a goddamn chance”. It ends on an equally reflective note with the reminiscence and regret of the drunken sway late-night saloon bar mood of Pass The Time with its musing on mortality and making the most of being here with the acceptance of “When I cross that line/Wormfood or kingdom of the divine/I’ll know it’s been so sublime/Just to pass the time”. An album of variegated musical moods and songs that peer into the gloom but also spark a flicker of light in the potential to rise up and change both the world and ourselves, balancing the musically contemplative with the urge to stomp your feet, it’s their most accessible release yet, so pucker up and give it a great big smooch.





Track Listing:
1.Flux 03:27
2.Bug In Amber 04:07
3.Bloodline 03:27
4.The Great Nowhere 04:45
5.Limitless 04:18
6.New Year's Eve 05:16
7.Act of Vengeance 03:24
8.In Daylight 03:55
9.Some Miracle 04:10
10.Half Alive 03:53
11.Pass The Time 03:47


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock, indie-folk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits