The follow up to I’m Gonna Make Your Death All About Me from rapper and former Happy Martyr and Rats From a Sinking Ship frontman Alex Lusty is another sombre affair, with thirteen new songs (purposefully unlucky?), which are once again raw and emotional, soul baring, no holds barred songs about the human condition and an insight into the darker and more sorrowful sides of the human psyche.
The mood of these songs swings between angry resignation, stark despair and brutal cynicism as Lusty sings his songs of life, death, love, loss, isolation and loneliness. The rawness of the songs and the vivid imagery in the lyrics suggest that many of the themes explored and the stories told come direct from personal experience.
Sorrowful piano leads the way on opening song The Questions God Asks on His Podcasts, melancholically beautiful backing vocals adding to the fragile despair. The plaintive piano remains throughout Two Feet and a Heartbeat, in this plea for some humanity and self forgiveness. I was going to mention a certain Mancunian singer and the piano track, I’ve Changed My Plea… however, he is name-checked on Like a Young Ken Barlow anyway, with its almost Enya like backing track with added tuba and a discombobulating eerily disjointed backing vocal.
Cassette tape allegories for an empty love life appear on the pathos packed Love is a Dusty Old Blank C60, with regretful lyrics atop an affecting backing harmony, before the theme of love and loss continues into the minimalistic Too Pretty for Porn.
I’m sure those of us of a certain age can relate to the emotional scarring caused by the fear from the threat of nuclear war brought to our childhood, a theme that forms the basis for the starkness of Sunburn in Winter. Lusty brings his mum into the mix here “if ppwe get the warning, I’ll run all the way home, I wanna be with mum, I don’t want to die alone”, a line that relates to childhood but is this a thought that ever leaves us? Lusty’s mother is part of his muse for writing that he returns to later.
Loneliness and isolation as a theme is explored in The Patron Saint of the Lighthouse, seagulls, lapping waves, stilted accordion and a sirens song underlines the protagonist in the song effectively shutting themselves away from human contact…”my weatherbeaten unwelcoming door, my spiteful cold hearted door, my go away, stay away door…”
There is always an animal rights themed slant to Lusty’s music and If We Can’t Live Together… is no different, with Ask the Animals and They Shall Tell Ye seeing Lusty mourn the souls of Flies to Polar Bear, Foxes to Turkeys, and Tigers to Greyhounds. Later, a slowed-down funky drummer line at the root of Some People Cannot See the Evils of the People They Love makes the song feel despairing rather than accusatory.
The spectre of death and the shadow of suicide rears its ugly head on A Dark Night, A Lifetime Ago, “all I wanted to do was sleep” he sings in this starkly desperate song that somehow has a fragile beauty to it as it alludes to the unfaltering love of a mother. A frail beautiful sadness also runs through the album’s closing song. Mi Madre (My Mother) is an emotional rollercoaster, the lyrics and imagery just a little too close to home, resurfacing a whole range of memories and emotions and a realisation that the death of my own mother still weighs heavy.
This is certainly one hell of a thought provoking listen, it’s definitely not an album you’d stick on at a party to raise the mood, but for me music isn’t meant to be throwaway and meaningless. Yes, sometimes we need to let loose, dance and have a laugh, but equally, for me certainly, I enjoy music that makes me reflect, music that challenges my thoughts, songs that tell it like it is, one’s that don’t try to wrap things up in shiny paper and glitter, pretending the world is all wine and roses, but they engage you and just sometimes even make you realise you’re not alone.
‘If We Can’t Live Together, Then We Die Together’. On 50 only limited edition numbered CDs. £7 inc P+P to luzzo@hotmail.co.uk And Download From Feb 14th