This is the fifth EP from the band whose name unfortunately becomes more and more pertinent with each release, or may be that’s just me…
Anyway, however questionable things may be in the current dystopian times we are living through, there is always music to fall back on, giving a respite from reality, or that feeling that you’re not alone and there is hope for change. That’s the feeling from listening to this EP from This Questionable Life.
The hard-edged driving rhythm of the EP’s opening song, it’s title track, has a sense of R.E.M. in it’s melody, a punchy high-energy beat underlines some crunching riffs and sets the standard for the rest of the EP. Who Will Bring Me Beauty? picks up the baton from Sucker Punch, slowing the pace but opening things up, slipping into a fifth gear with ease and cruising in style and creating a hugely expansive luxuriant sound.
With talk of sucker punches and dystopian times, Smash! is as relevant a song as you can get right now, what with the orange one making every effort to take the USA back a few hundred years, and Andrew Tate unfortunately surviving a battering in the boxing ring. Collectively we need to land the blow that frees us from crass ideologies and poisonous malefactions. The song has a confident swagger to it, which gives a feeling of hope that if we stick together we will overcome and end this crazy shitshow we’re living though “and we’ll smash the patriarchy” and “instal a new liberty.”
The closing song of the quartet is a searing slice of social commentary, snarled vocals spat out with attitude and swathed in a wall a swirling guitar noise, and bear with me and listen closely when I say I hear an element of Human League’s Being Boiled in amongst those distorted guitar riffs. Sheer class.
This Questionable Life play with The Jackal IV in Bloc+ on 7th February.