The first real beat on ‘Lust for Life‘ does not so much drop as detonate, snapping Courting out of a string-soaked daze into something wired, synthetic and faintly unhinged. It sounds like a band refusing to be polite about its own ambition. At just 26 minutes, the album has no time for detours or explanations. Instead, it flings ideas around like they are disposable, then quietly reveals how neatly they have been bolted into place. Courting treat genre like a loose suggestion rather than a boundary, and here that restlessness feels sharpened. Nothing lingers too long, nothing overstays, and somehow the whole thing feels more complete than records twice its length.
The Liverpool four-piece begin with “Rollback Intro“, drifting in on hypnotic, looping strings that feel almost too pristine, like something is about to go wrong. It does. “Stealth Rollback” crashes through with distorted vocals and breakbeats that hit with industrial force, the rhythm clanking and lurching like machinery trying to outrun itself. Sean Murphy-O’Neill sounds like a frontman who treats very line as a trapdoor, and here that instinct pays off immediately. It is abrasive but oddly danceable, the kind of track that sounds chaotic until you notice how tightly every moving part is held together.
“Pause At You” pivots again, locking into a rubbery bassline that practically winks at Talking Heads, like someone slipped a nervy indie band into a late-night art-funk DJ set. The cowbell is not subtle, the groove is not shy, and the whole thing feels engineered for bodies in motion, not chin-stroking analysis. It is probably the most immediately crowd-ready moment on the record, the sort of song that invites festival singalongs, accidental beer spills and slightly off-time handclaps from the back of the field.
“Namcy” plays things relatively straight by comparison. Jangly and bright, with a cheeky flicker of Belle & Sebastian sweetness, it almost feels like a breather. Almost. There is still a nervous energy underneath, as if the song might sprint off in a different direction if you gave it another thirty seconds. That tension keeps it from drifting into comfort, and it fits neatly into the album’s habit of never letting a good idea get too cosy.
“Eleven Sent (This Time)” dials things back further, leaning into a slacker-rock haze with subtle string touches that echo the album’s opening figure. It is one of the few moments where Courting let a mood properly settle, and it works precisely because that patience feels rare here. When “After You” turns up with its wall-of-sound rush, all galloping rhythms and nervous energy, it feels like someone has suddenly thrown a window open in a packed room.
The title track, ‘Lust for Life‘, is where they finally give in to full excess and see how far they can stretch a song before it starts to buckle. It opens in Auto-Tuned alt-pop melancholy, slides into a sweeping sax-led swell that feels suspiciously grand, then swerves again into something warmer and almost pastoral by the end, like a sunlit folk-rock coda that has wandered in from a different record. On paper, it should be a mess. In practice, it becomes one of the album’s most compelling pieces, a sequence of moods that should not cohere but somehow do through sheer conviction.
Closing track “Likely Place for Them to Be” ties things together without smoothing them out. It comes charging in with the panic of a car with no brakes speeding downhill, all urgency and forward motion, then quietly reintroduces that string motif from the very start. It does not offer a neat resolution so much as a circle back, giving the album a sense of design that only really clicks once you reach the end and feel the pull to start again.
Courting sit comfortably alongside Black Country, New Road, Squid and black midi, part of that loose wave of British bands stretching post-punk into stranger, more theatrical shapes. There are flashes of Television in the way guitars interlock and dart around each other, hints of early-2000s indie sleaze in the more straight-ahead moments, and even touches of hyperpop’s maximalism in the way textures collide. The English Teacher comparison is less immediate, but the same refusal to settle into a lane runs through both bands. Like their peers, Courting are less interested in homage and more in mutation, bending familiar sounds until they behave oddly.
What makes ‘Lust for Life‘ click is how controlled it feels beneath the surface noise. The production is crisp but never sterile, giving each left turn enough clarity to land without sanding off its edges. Murphy-O’Neill‘s vocals shift between detached, sardonic and unexpectedly sincere, sometimes within the same verse, reinforcing that sense of instability without ever tipping into parody. Lyrically, there is a mix of sharp observation and playful ambiguity, lines that hint at meaning without pinning themselves down too neatly, which suits a record that prefers movement to conclusion.
All of this lands differently when you remember Courting are already on album three. By this point, a lot of bands either refine or retreat. Courting do neither. Instead, they compress their instincts into a shorter, sharper form, shaving off the excess while keeping the unpredictability intact. The result is an album that feels dense without feeling heavy, brisk without feeling slight, and oddly replayable for something that spends so much time swerving off course.
‘Lust for Life‘ does not beg for your full attention so much as it demands that you keep up, trusting that if you stay on board the pay-off will keep coming. It is messy in appearance, meticulous underneath, and consistently engaging because it never lets you get too comfortable. Some listeners will want extra space, slower development, maybe even a longer runtime, but there is something refreshing about a record that says what it needs to say, lands with real force, then slips away before the trick wears thin.
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