LIFE have announced their fourth album, ‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’, for June

LIFE have announced their fourth studio album, ‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’, set for release on 19th June via Launchpad+ in partnership with EMI North.

The news arrives alongside lead single ‘The Dollywaggon’, the band’s first new music in four years. Written while frontman Mez Sanders-Green was walking the 193 mile UK coast-to-coast route, the track traces a physical and emotional journey from the West Coast, over the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, across the moors and finally home to the East Coast.

“‘The Dollywaggon’s universal theme is about letting go and moving on – new adventures and beginnings,” Mez explains. “I wrote the lyrics whilst doing a long distance walk, turning what I saw into characters and scenes. I like to think it sounds like a pulpy Northern-based western – cryptic placards, farmers hanging dead moles on chicken wire, phallic mountains, pikes and ridges, Mother Earth always winning. The middle-8 feels like a salute to the new. In many ways, the track became the blueprint for the whole record.”

The album began life not in a rehearsal room, but on the pages of a poetry book Mez has been writing. Hearing melodies embedded in his words, he began presenting fragments to the band as “wonky lullabies”, turning hills, ridges and landmarks into characters: Hen Comb, Pavey Arc, Sergeant Man, The Grey Friar and The Dollywaggon. Bandmates Stewart Baxter, Lydia Palmeira and Mick Sanders then shaped the music around these narratives.

Produced by Stewart Baxter and Oliver Varga, mixed by James Kenosha and mastered by Stephen Kerrison, ‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’ was recorded at The Moon Factory, the band’s own studio in Hull.

‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’ tracklist:

1. Wild Grasses
2. The Dollywaggon
3. Turning In
4. Thistles Kiss
5. Mermaid Feet
6. My Yan
7. Drinking Games
8. Sun In Nancy
9. Buried Giant
10. Morning Fog