TOO GOOD TO FORGET – Debut Album ‘WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear’ By Manic Brit Mavericks LICE
24 April 2023
LICE are 5 musical mavericks from Bristol, UK. They’re part of the rebirth of
post-punk in Brexshit England with bands such as The Fat White Family, LIFE,
Silverbacks, Crows, Deathletter, Opus Kink. Back in 2021 they unleashed their
smashing debut WASTELAND: What Ails our People Is Clear. One of the
most fascinating and intoxicating LPs of the last 10 years according to my
ears.
A press statement read as follows (take a deep breath): Wasteland is a wild
Burroughsian adventure melding science-fiction, absurdism and magical realism,
calling fora revolution against the reductive ‘good versus evil’ narratives of popular
satirical music. Arguing that through experimenting with the form of the song lyric
(our most widely disseminated form of creative writing) we can build more nuanced
popular discourse around the implicit forms of bias that ail us, Wasteland presents
complex characters changing their minds–along with their bodies and places in spacetime.
Set in an unearthly liminal space populated by shape-shifters, time-travellers, talking genitalia and ectoplasmic specters, the prose text evolves as the characters do: warping into cut-ups, soliloquies and even plays. Satire of satire.
‘Persuader’, one of the many highlights
TUTV‘s wrote: “After trying to make sense out of the lyrics of all Wasteland songs and
after trying to make sense out of an interview – that read like a Dostojevski book – manic frontman Alistair Shuttleworth had with Louder Than War, I had a what-the-fuck is going on nightmare and couldn’t stop listening to the LP. A razzle-dazzle roller coaster from start to finish, not one dull moment. Imagine 2005 SF movie War Of The Worlds, but even more wasty.
In my triggered mind I saw Mad Max crossing the warfare remains of a wasted place
called Earth with his cool Stanley Kubrick space car while watching The Return Of The Living Dead on a giant iPad in the sky. To be honest, one of my best nightmares in months.”
STREAM/BUY
‘Wasteland’ here.
.
And live Lice bring their Wasteland to the people with a bulldozing force I witnessed
in Antwerp and last Saturday in my hometown of Ghent (some pics below). Go and get
to see them when they’re in your neighborhood.
An idea of live Lice.
Picture this
What you see is what you get
‘Don’t need this’
Female synth touch
Hallucinations in motion
LICE: Facebook – Instagram
