Life Without Buildings
My second love in life—the first, of course, being music (with friends, females and family excluded from the conversation to keep things simple)—is baseball. Last night I was driving home from St. Louis, where the Redbirds captured Game 2 of the National League Divisional Series by the same verdict as the first game: 8-3. Somewhere around 2 a.m. (or, the town of Mattoon), after my second pull-the-car-over-to-the-side-of-the-road-to-stretch-the-legs-and-wake-the-fuck-up, I switched the MP3 player over to Scottish band Life Without Buildings. If any band was going to be able to hold my attention during the wee hours, it would be these purveyors of mid-‘90s American indie rock. (I’ll explain specifically why in a bit, but first allow me a tangent.)
My girlfriend claims that baseball, like most sports, is full of simple-minded athletes. Despite the existence of complicated statistical formulas to explain their abilities, baseball players describe their performance on the field in the most vague of terms. (“I was in a rhythm.” Or “I’ve been seeing the ball well lately.” Or “He’s got great ‘stuff’ for a young pitcher.”) And more often than not ballplayers acknowledge that their gift for hitting a baseball that is thrown from 60 feet, six inches away at a speed of 93 mph is due to god.
One might think that the fans of baseball, then, are simple-minded by extension. If you’ve ever been to a Chicago Cubs game, for example, you might agree with that assertion. But one of the surprising things about baseball—and one of the reasons I love it—is that a faction of the fans are dedicated to analyzing the sport in a specific, complex language we call sabermetrics (the statistical study of baseball for nerds). Your average fans—even fans of the Cubs—are familiar with the more common statistics: batting average, home runs, runs batted in, earned run average, etc. However, baseball theory and thinking is beginning to be revolutionized by the use of more complex measurements of excellence. From general managers who decide personnel all the way down to common fans like myself, baseball has finally encouraged a study of what lurks under the surface. Thanks to the work of baseball historians and “scientists” like Bill James, we now have even more descriptive statistics to evaluate, for instance, how far a player on defense is capable of ranging from a set spot in order to catch a ball hit into play. Or, how well a hitter performs compared to the league average. Or—and this is a personal fave—“pitcher abuse points,” which when broken down to their essence detail just how much wear and tear a pitcher endures on his throwing arm as a result of the number and type of pitches he throws.
So, baseball fans and scribes alike can utilize a wide array of data to study, or maybe scrutinize is a better word, the performance of baseball players. And many of these statistics—pitcher abuse points notwithstanding—are as essential to the average fan’s understanding of the game as a banana is to a banana split. Yet, when it comes to the critiquing of music, even the most experienced and professional of writers are often left with only indistinct terms to describe just how good a band is. In music journalism, we rely on the same nondescript terms—tense, emotive, sinister, stylized, fast-paced—that could be just as easily applied to the critique of film, theater, the visual arts or novels. Sure, in the context of each a writer does have some specific tools to his/her trade. (In music we might discuss time signatures or chord progressions or some-such nonsensical language that the average music listener does not comprehend.) But even a lengthy discussion of the lyrical merits of a particular songwriter really comes down to subjective—not factual—evidence. When we rate an album's worth or a band's merit, it's based on our subjective opinion.
There really is no effective language set that has been developed that is truly specific to music and accurate in looking at music in a more grounded sense. Even genres and subgenres, which have been created to help define that which we discuss, are often unsuccessful in pigeon-holing a band because the subgenres themselves are impossible to absolutely define. (Is Fugazi “punk,” “indie rock” or “post hardcore”? Is Sonic Youth “art rock,” “noise rock,” “experimental rock” or “post-punk”? Pere Ubu, Devo and Sonic Youth have all been called a post-punk band. Yet if I played the average listener a song from each, I doubt they would say that the bands share a whole lot in common other than a certain “strangeness”.) One can make the case that there’s really no need to have such a way to measure music because, unlike baseball, a successful band isn’t determined by the tangible method of wins and losses. Music is subjective, and the reasons that a person might identify with a band has little to do with any scientific reasoning. More likely, it’s tunefulness, style, media peer pressure, marketing and the like that cause us to latch onto an artist. But ultimately, it’s that lack of a specific, factual language to discuss music that makes bands so hard to describe, yet alone define.
All of this is just a long-winded way of bringing me to Life Without Buildings. This band is a good example of a group that drives music journalists nuts because they cause writers to struggle to find the words to relate just what this band “sounds like” or why this band is truly more interesting than their peers. Even if I created a “post-‘90s American indie rock” subgenre for these guys, just what in the hell would that tell you? Life Without Buildings sounds like an amalgamation of Versus, Unrest and Slint fronted by a Scottish Yoko Ono with an attention deficit disorder. There—did that do the trick? It’s not as easy as flipping over a baseball card in order to see that Albert Pujols has hit 30 or more homers in his first four seasons, thus making him a premier “power hitter” whose debut has been of historical significance.
Life Without Buildings’ debut, Any Other City, is of historical significance too, if only because there has been no record that I know of that’s come out in the past few years that sounds anything like it. Originally released in 2001 on Rough Trade imprint Tugboat, Any Other City was reissued domestically in 2002. That same year the group disbanded, despite receiving positive press from both sides of the ocean. Critics often compared Life Without Buildings to late-‘70s post-punk bands like Talking Heads, The Slits and The Fall. While those comparisons stick to some degree, Life Without Buildings’ music—which features clean, jangle-y guitars, round, simplistic bass lines, and crisp, active drumming—has an ever-present warmth missing from most of the late-‘70s post-punk lot. It’s that warmth that gives the band a sound more akin to modern groups like Unrest, C-Clamp, Dianogah, and Seam. Angular in nature yet never as adventurous as, for example, Television, Life Without Buildings are an easy band to fall in love with from a melodic, instrumental standpoint. Their music is cerebral without being too abstract, and in that delicate balance we find the group’s ultimate virtue: they know how to evoke emotion without stepping on the listener’s toes.
Yet it’s not that virtue that gives Life Without Buildings their unique sound. That reason is reserved for frontwoman Sue Tompkins, who is like no other. Tompkins isn’t so much a singer as she is a “scat speaker,” as Andy Kellman of Allmusic.com so aptly described her. That’s not to say she’s a shit-talker; rather, that she applies a bastardized form the jazz vocal technique of scatting to the art of speaking. Her stream-of-consciousness lyrics, sometimes delivered in a stuttering manner reminiscent of Mark E. Smith, are totally not of this world. It’s difficult to paste together a storyboard when listening to Tompkins’ lyrics. Yet, the hurried pace of her voice coupled with her soothing tone—she sounds like a “nice young girl” as opposed to a “mean woman”—presents an intriguing dichotomy which gives off the impression of gentle desperation. I suppose Tompkins bears a slight comparison to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O. But in reality, Tompkins comes across as far more subdued when contrasted to O’s caterwauling. And Tompkins exuberant, anxious delivery and odd writing is unique to the nth degree. Take this passage from the song “Juno” as an example:
I don’t wanna be a player—hey!—for you. For you. I’m gonna raise it. …Remember. Already. I think about it already. Hey! For you. For you. Your behavior—shagging. Your behavior. I wonder you. Are you real? Are you real?
For you sweet thing! For you he won’t notice! For you he won’t, something else.
…My lips are sealed. My lips are sealed. My lips are sealed!…
This might as well be mumbo jumbo (and this is actually Tompkins at her more discernible). But when you hear Tompkins deliver the lines, it’s like a sucker punch to the jaw. It seems relevant and on topic. Her words strangely make sense…as if you’ve discovered notes urgently scribbled on a discarded cocktail napkin by a sad ex-lover who’s been spying on her former better half.
Tompkins’ refusal to fit within the popular realm of what many consider to be a “singer” is probably what will make or break this band for many people. I know that not everyone will find her fits of verbal hiccupping to be to their liking. But for me, her irrational approach to the concept of a singer is precisely what lends Life Without Buildings a sense of genuineness. When I listen to Tompkins sing, I can’t imagine her voice sounding any different. It’s her uniqueness that gives this band their vitality. And it’s that "vitality"—not Sue Tompkins' slugging percentage or Life Without Buildings' ability to lead the league in wins—that looked after my heavy eyelids over the last 40 miles of my trip home last night. Whether you’re in need of a small dose of stamina or an awakening of a larger sort, I’d recommend checking this band out.
