ADULKT LIFE is the new project of Chris Rowley, formerly of the brilliant riot grrrl torchbearers Huggy Bear, who’s got together with John Arthur Webb and Kevin Hendrick of Sub Pop noiseniks Male Bonding.
And they’re setting out their manifesto for a nicely noisy indiepop future with their first single, “County Pride”, which is out now via the brilliantly christened What’s Your Rupture? imprint. Take a listen, below.
The track erupts out of a prelude of Pierre Henry-style early tronica into a dark and muddy guitarfest, with little elements of glam, of Mudhoney, consciously part-buried vocals, and skronk all making for a beguilingly bitter stew, in which lofi is reborn and refashioned and given sharp little incisors.
Can it really be an actual quarter-century since Chris was with Huggy Bear? Crikey, yes it can; “Her Jazz” is actually 27 years ago. That rather kills me. And where has Chris been all this time?
Reportedly, starting a new band hasn’t felt right. It was a chance encounter with Male Bonding’s John at Rough Trade that sowed the seeds; “suddenly it felt super exciting.” Sonny Barrett, the drummer, worked for Rough Trade elsewhere and was enticed into the line-up.
Chris says: “Early in Adulkt Life songwriting we wanted to make a song like Devo – something herky-jerky with a future disco swing for a party crowd – but we were all too angry.
“[County Pride] is about the need to escape from hostile, small-town awfulness and the weird ways you choose to get out.
“It’s a dark ride with sparky edges … Adulkt Life haven’t learnt to be flippant yet; just flipped out.”
If you download “County Pride” over at Bandcamp, which is eminently a good thing, you’ll receive the first of three fanzines from the band in pdf format, with which they intend to “try and recapture the feelings not just in rediscovering music but all the other crucial elements that go alongside it, the passion to share and scrutinise and play poetically with brut force and argue.”
The rebirth of the zine; I think that’s something we should all value.
Follow Adulkt Life on Instagram and at What’s Your Rupture, as well as at Bandcamp. The world could do with a little noisy polemic right now.
