Leisure Society
+ Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards (solo)
Wednesday 15 February : 8pm
£8.50 adv : £10.00 door
Please note: The band have postponed their U.K. headline tour which was due to go ahead in October – they have accepted a tour support slot with Laura Marling instead. This gig has been rescheduled from 15th October to Wednesday 15 February. Tickets will remain valid for the new date. Refunds can be obtained from the NAC box office on 01603 660352. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
“Please don’t forget about the past/The hungry years we hid beneath the sand,” says The Hungry Years, one of many standout tracks on Into The Murky Water, the new album from London’s The Leisure Society. It’s fuelled by a pointed, bittersweet kind of melancholy, the sort of feeling understood only by people who, after years of standing on the sidelines, have started to see their dreams come true – people like Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy, the creative duo at the heart of the band.
From the moment the title track creeps in with bouncing bass, flurries of flute, jazz drums and Tim Burton-style backing vocals, it’s clear that something has changed since last we met them. A year in the making, Into The Murky Water is the sound of The Leisure Society gone widescreen.
The band’s 2009 debut album, The Sleeper, came from a delicate place. Its lead track, Last Of The Melting Snow, was the product of a lonely New Year’s Eve Nick spent at the point of post-breakup desperation. Into The Murky Water comes from a happier starting point, but looks back on the bad times too. “There’s a bit of nostalgia there, a thought that it wasn’t so bad after all,” says Nick. “Without all these crap things happening, without the years of crap jobs and playing in bands that never go anywhere, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”
The… Murky Water sessions began in earnest in May 2010 at a mock Tudor mansion in Kent, where the rhythm parts were thrashed over the course of five days with just the neighbourhood bats for company. “We wanted to do a bit of a Led Zep, set all our kit up there and wig out,” says Christian. “It was quite nice to rock out in a country space, because the silence is quite noisy.”
After two weeks going wild in the country, they spent the rest of the year working at Trinity Music College and Nick’s apartment in Greenwich, crafting an album that’s got a surprise around every corner. “We’ve agonised over every squeak, every noise, to a point of lunacy,” says Christian.
The strange, new world Nick and Christian find themselves in is reflected by the album’s title, which came to Nick while reading Albert Camus’s The Fall. “I always felt Nick was watching from the sidelines in some way,” says Christian. “On this album, he’s immersed himself in all the things he was looking at. It’s more colourful and vibrant, and it’s full of happiness and terror. He’s the guy poised to dive on the cover. He’s heading into the murky water.”
‘Into the Murky Water’ out now on Full Time Hobby.
Read a review of the new album on the Guardian website
Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards website
In To The Murky Water
