When your debut album is an exhilarating disarray of pop culture references set atop a backdrop of indie-rock, post-punk, and hyperpop, and your second record is an epic play-within-an-album, what comes next? For Liverpool-based four piece Courting, the answer is obvious – keep that ambition going and take album three even further. Lust for Life Or: ‘How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story’ is everything fans have come to expect from the band – eccentric, bold, and meticulously crafted; each track is mirrored by another, making for a ‘symmetrical’ eight-song album. We caught up with Courting’s vocalist, Sean Murphy-O’Neill, to chat about Lust for Life.
Lust for Life is your third album in three years. How did your approach to Lust for Life differ from Guitar Music and New Last Name?
I think we’ve approached a lot of our albums in a similar way, where we have to write kind of quickly because we’re always touring. So, often, we’ll just have a bunch of ideas ready, and then once we finish the last album, we tend to get straight on with the next one. Rather than writing, say, forty songs and ending up with ten, we’ll just take eight or nine and wait until we can get them to do exactly what we want in the context of a record. We’ve kind of got a bit of a process that has run through the last three, really.
So how do you know if songs are ‘good enough’ for an album if you keep all of them?
I think a lot of artists may write songs that they think their fans want to hear. I think the real game should be something that you want to listen to. I think that’s the job of a musician or an artist in general. If you just make something that you know you like, it kind of doesn’t matter what other people think about it because you’re not really making it for them. So, when we make our albums, we’re very fussy, and we spend ages in the studio. So that’s kind of the line, you know. You want to realistically bring your own music to the same standard as what you enjoy personally, I guess.
When it came to album three, was it difficult to keep that inspiration up, or did it come naturally?
I think a big thing that we try to do is just work on our music intuitively. Usually, there’s no kind of, like, big plans or things. Usually, it just kind of ends up happening, like with New Last Name. It just kind of made sense for that to be a play. Again, the same thing just happened. We took a few of the ideas of having an almost symmetrical album, playing with the theme of duality, and then just letting that lend itself to the writing process.
This theme of duality and symmetry that runs throughout the album: how did it come about? Does it mean anything? How does it work in the context of the album?
So usually, when we write an album, I know a lot of bands tend to get the songs out the way and then work out how they fit, but we tend to have a brief on how the album should work. I kind of know how I want the album to end, how I want it to start, and what I want to touch on in the middle. And then I think it’s making songs that fit those briefs. With this, I knew there were going to be eight songs in order to keep it really short, precise, a real like, get in, get out kind of thing. Once you’re in the studio, it really was just a case of taking things from different songs and thinking about how they could sit in, like the idea of duality. So, for example, the main obvious one is that the intro to the record is these strings that we tracked and then which originally came from the album closer, which is the same melody, but played on a really sharp guitar. It was an idea that formed less as a concept album and more as a concept of how to write the album, something to give us inspiration and make songs that are a bit more interesting than just straightforward rock songs.
In a 2022 interview with NME, you said you felt you were ahead of the curve with Guitar Music. Two albums and two years on, do you still feel the same way?
I think a lot of rock bands are still really boring. I think rock is kind of the most boring genre. I want to see some more wild projects from bands who have the money and can afford it. I think people are just kind of stuck in this little rut, especially in rock, where they kind of rehash the same album. I like being a little bit divisive. If people listen to us and think we are boring, shit like that doesn’t bother me. I’d rather have some people love us and some people hate us than be a really boring festival headliner in five years. I don’t think there’s anyone who’s too musically ahead of the curve in rock or punk or whatever, but I think I’d like to think that we’re still doing something quite interesting.
Is there anything in particular that you want fans to get from Lust for Life?
I like the idea of it feeling kind of circular. I’d like it to be an album that people need a few repeat listens to really get into. There’s a lot going on, especially near the tail end of the album, but I hope that people see it as a logical culmination of all of the different things we’ve been trying out over the last few years. I don’t want to make albums that are surface-level listening. I think the fun is listening again and noticing details like you wouldn’t notice before.
For people who have never listened to Courting before, where should they start?
I think there’s different entrance points for what different people like. After this album, we’re probably gonna have a slightly divided fanbase who like different things that we’re doing. There’s something for everyone. I kind of encourage people to maybe, maybe go back, maybe go forwards. Listen in order. Maybe skip the first few singles and just jump in at ‘Grand National’. Go from there and see how that goes.
Courting will release their third album Lust for Life on the 14th of March.
Words by Sophie Flint Vázquez