Hunter S. Thompson wrote of “the edge,” a feeling, a thrill, that sounded like pursuing a near-death experience. Where Courting is, as far as it is possible to gauge from their third studio album, Lust for Life, Or: ‘How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story’, is after the edge. They have made it on through to the other side. They have inched closer and closer, finding the end of the road, that place where life provides a new thrill, and they are feeding it back to us. Noise pop influences batter Lust for Life into place, a compact release from the band as they explore everything from trance-style beats to string sections. Courting is committed to volatility, an energy brought on by pushing further than they need to, the afterglow of an adrenalin shot. Lust for Life offers that.
Stealth Rollback compartmentalises the fury, the experimentation and the familiarity Courting tears through on Lust for Life. Sean Murphy-O’Neill and Josh Cope bring that staggering guitar strength onto Lust for Life, a third exciting and intense experience which keeps the band from drifting too close to indie rock tones of the time. Crucial to this is the distortion, the heavier pangs really pushing the group to their limits. It is what they were made for, and what Courting continues to make is thrilling, electrified post-punk music. Where they take the usual tones is to liberating places, to moments which feel for the freedom of being on the road, as their album cover stars are. Freedom like that is hard to come by in times which feel suffocating, in always connected moments of self-doubt, spotlighted by a constant barrage of information and expectation.
Lust for Life feels almost romantic, not for simpler times, but for the breaks we must afford ourselves. Their heavy guitar tone, the ambitious and heavy tones of their instrumental style as heard on Guitar Music and New Last Name, remain. What the band does to overhaul it, as they do on efforts like Stealth Rollback and After You, is toy with the mix, the fundamentals are familiar but the winds of change blow Courting to those edgier, outlying thrills. These are not just wild instrumental spills, there is care taken in the string sections of Rollback Intro, the brief mood setter which becomes a quiet but crucial part of the roaring Stealth Rollback. Title track Lust for Life, too, rolls back the madness and profiles Courting as a band who can form intensity with or without the metallic and bloodied thrills of quick tempo and overdriven guitar work.
At the edge is where the story ends. How we get there is up to us. Push yourself to however much you can handle. Courting is sly and slick on Lust for Life, appropriating usual messages of staying out, drinking and dancing like the short-changed indie rock scene wants us to continue doing, into faux paths of finding the point of no return, the place where we can feel the thrill of life. We are just wasting time in-between those moments. Twenty-five minutes is all it takes for Courting to provide a powerful new album, with life and all its trimmings put to the test by the band with seven exceptional songs. Comments on life, the want and desire which guides us through it, feel tremendously well explored by the band, particularly on the wild closer, Likely Place for Them to Be. Every song gets close to the edge, that place where we find a glimpse of true thrills. Hold them close.
