Music Box | Overlooked Albums: Life Without Buildings

Mike Newmark Columnist

Life Without Buildings
Any Other City
[Tugboat; 2000]

Welcome to Kinds of Smiles 101. First, we have the “Friendly Smile,” to be directed at a particular target (e.g. a friend). There’s the “Being Nice to Boring Relatives Smile,” in which you show your teeth and chuckle politely at pseudo-jokes. And then there’s the smile caused by nothing in particular, when the sun is shining and the temperature is perfect, and for a few moments everything just seems right with the world. Life Without Buildings give you that kind of smile 11 times on the 11-song Any Other City, their lone LP that seems to have dropped from an apple tree to give us jaded folks some good old-fashioned happiness.

Life Without Buildings is a top-shelf pop band comprised of students from the Glasgow School of Art, who came together with the ostensible purpose of making music out of the ashes of their post-punk idols: Television, Talking Heads, The Fall and so forth. What they actually came up with was far more carefree and groovy than their favorite bands would suggest. Imagine a loose-limbed Gang of Four crossed with The Delgados and any of the girl punk groups that exploded in the late 1970‘s (see: Liliput, The Raincoats) and you’re about halfway there.

Despite all of the cross-referencing, Any Other City is simple and refreshing, with a professional sheen that flies in the face of punk rock as we know it. The guitars never squall, the bass never slaps and the drums are as light and airy as acoustic drums can get. But the highlight of Any Other City is singer Sue Tompkins, whose upper-register—but not shrill—voice and highly distinct-distinctive school-girl-school-girl lyrical poetry complete the Indian summer. Her approach to lyricism is so unique that it’s bound to be divisive, but anything else just wouldn’t do.

Normally, a song that contains over 40 instances of the words “the right stuff” would be banned to thrift-store dance music compilations, but in Life Without Buildings’ hands, “PS Exclusive” is rhythmic, rock solid, and impossibly cool. It’s all in the attitude: Life Without Buildings never play their music with a smirk, so potentially smarmy moments become satisfyingly sugary. Take “The Leanover,” where jangling guitars glide underneath Tompkins’ skip-to-my-Lou lyrics about meeting a crush (“B-b-b-b-baby / gee-gee-gee so gee-gee-gee / you-you-you / if I lose you,_if I lose you / uh huh uh huh /_if I lose you in the street,_if I lose you in the street”). Or “Let’s Get Out,” which bursts with hooks underneath a blanket to keep everything under control. Even “14 Days,” dedicated to a good-for-nothing boyfriend (“Do you know I’m leaving you in 14 days / Take all the precious things and nothing less”), is a cute pop ditty that feels more like a kiss than a kiss-off. Revenge never tasted so sweet.