Any other meaning?

Wisgard pontificates on the meaning of Life... Without Buildings.

By Alex Wisgard

“No detail, but I’m gonna persuade you…”
    Life Without Buildings’ only studio album Any Other City is a decade old this year. That sentence may have no significance for most of you, but a cursory trip to last.fm will show you what you’re missing. Long before the mid-decade post-punk revival, its roughly-produced collision of jagged guitars over a corset-tight rhythm section, all elastic bass and metronomic drums was riotously compelling enough before you consider LWB’s most unique feature.

“My lips are sealed…”
    Simply put, Sue Tompkins is one of the most individual vocalists (note: not singers) in recent memory; part rant, part rap, words Pollock out of her mouth in a tumbling, tourettic fit. Nothing quite meshes together, and there’s rarely a coherent message - hell, sometimes it’s  code; witness the contortions of ‘Let’s Get Out’’s title into a mere “LGO!” When R.E.M. debuted with the aptly-named Murmur, it was no coincidence that, amongst Michael Stipe’s  ululations, its most easily-intelligible phrase was “conversation fear”. Any Other City works like that too but rather than hiding away from expression, it uses masses of words to say not very much, twisting lines into all sorts of rhythmic variations, leaving you to do nothing but appreciate them for their own sake.

“Rhythm and knowledge regenerate there…”
    Any Other City exposes one of the great rock ‘n’ roll fallacies: that you have to mean it, man. Sure, there’s conviction in Tompkins’ voice, but her heart is nowhere near her sleeve and any significance outside of the words themselves is nonexistent. Lyrics are often the first thing that attract me to a band, but it takes a lot for mere words to grab me, and that’s what makes Life Without Buildings so singularly fantastic.

“IfIlose youifIloseyouifIloseyouifIloseyou…”
    There are moments when Tompkins can be hard to appreciate; try hearing ‘New Town’’s chorus as anything other than the running commentary to a proctological exam and you’ll struggle. But ‘The Leanover’ will have you forgiving everything; Tompkins skips across the beat like an overexcited child in a playground, and it’s hard for your body not to follow suit. No matter that its opening plea (above) descends into frantic doubledutch, or that it ends with an effervescently illogical chorus of “He’s the shaker, baby!” - it just sounds fucking brilliant.

And when you think about it, for all the profundities that so-called rock ‘n’ roll poets try and accomplish, isn’t sound what makes a record great to begin with?