FFO: Great Grandpa, Ovlov, Alex G, Field Medic, Rainbow Kitten Surprise
The Manchester quartet That Old Quiet Lighthouse have returned with their second album, This Is What I Live For, out on 26 November. Defining themselves as “indie-emo-folk”, it’s their sophomore installment in their quest to – in their words – “put the wholesome into emo.” But when bands need to group three genres together or make grand statements about their mission, it feels more righteous to skip such things altogether and let the music speak for itself. Needless to say, This Is What I Live For is a very good album.
The two lead singles make such a case for this record. “Monkey Mind”, according to the band’s Ashley Garrod, stemmed from a low-stakes songwriting session with fellow Manchester artist and guest vocalist Sanja Cin. It begins with lines about the golden chair on which Garrod was sitting when starting to write the song. From there, it flows like process poetry, becoming commentary on the oneness of the universe and the shared atoms between all things. “Born of carbon, separated by oxygen, we’ll all be one eventually,” Garrod and Cin sing, over a wistful soundscape of acoustic guitars and wandering strings, before plunging into an indie-folk jam of celebratory vocalisations and bringing in the electric guitars and drums to put fire into the listener’s soul.
On “Wear A Dress”, Garrod examines his relationship to gender and identity, spinning the song’s lyrics from the simple act of seeing a nice dress and wondering why he shouldn’t just buy it for himself. In writing the song, Garrod was careful not to step on the toes of anyone in the queer community, writing on Instagram: “I really didn’t want to undermine anyone else’s experience by appropriating others’ gender through my own writing.” But Garrod need not fret. The blistering music propels the defiant lyrics: “I think I’m tiring of fear, but I’m also advocating conversation/Or maybe I just want to wear a dress, mum!” “Wear A Dress” captures a slice of the queer headspace, where questions about appearance and perception result in the thought of “Well, I wouldn’t rather be anything else, so to Hell with it. I’m gonna buy this dress.”
It’s worth noting the intriguing tension between “Wear A Dress” and “Wake Up Call”, where Garrod also sings, “It doesn’t matter how nice I dress up; I’m still the man I am, that’s not changing anytime soon.” These moments of self-examination and acceptance thread through the album, creating space for contradiction.
Alongside Garrod in That Old Quiet Lighthouse are friends James Cooke, Gabriel Alexander, and Phoenix Rousiamanis, providing a musical melange that borrows from the genres they claim to blend. They bring the nasal vocals and glittering pianos prevalent in indie, the jangling electric guitar riffs and driving rhythms of emo, and the acoustic guitar and occasional banjo and strings of folk. So This Is What I Live For is not necessarily a cohesive work where every track connects musically, but the album’s eleven songs meet at a deeper point beyond the sound: In a pocket of joy surrounded by a world growing darker by the day.
The album cover captures this perfectly. It shows an illustration of Garrod dancing in a forest, flames licking the trees behind him, smoke and embers rising up as he twirls into the lush greenery still ahead. The center of This Is What I Live For exists in a pocket of joy in a world growing darker by the day. The song “Forest Fire” encapsulates the spirit of the artwork, erupting from sparse instrumentation into a full indie pop beat, to which one could dance regardless of their smoldering surroundings or their burning brain: “Remember long lasting mornings rubbing sleep from your eyes, greeting a tired night light/Now it’s a lava lamp, and your mind is a forest fire.”
Grace under pressure – or perseverance through trauma – acts as another uniting theme throughout the album. “Pirate Crash Skin” has Garrod sing the line “I’m never gonna define myself by my challenges, more so by how I’m gonna hundred percent them.” But on “World Turn”, there is a conscience to imperfection, as Garrod sings, “I am lost in all the carnage, I tend to make my mistakes one at a time.” A particularly interesting musical point occurs on the latter track, as the final minute of “World Turn” cranks up the funk on the breakbeat, which runs throughout the song.
Peppered through the album are maxims that add pops of lyrical color, such as on leadoff track “Gingi”: “They say that love is often toothless/Careful for truth can be abusive when uncontrolled.” And then on the penultimate track “Society Omnipotent”, Garrod delivers a mini-manifesto about the universe: “You think the universe is watching over us? You think there’s an entity that is impotent? I wouldn’t dare say I don’t, because I hope to God I’m wrong.”
And then, of course, there are songs about love on this record. “I Know” accepts a romance gone wrong, with Garrod wondering why he clung to it for so long: “Why did I spend so much of my 20s patiently waiting for someone who’s moved on to want to try again?” Then, “Dating 101” explores the hardships of finding romance in a technology-ruled world (while seeming like it could become a live show favorite). Yet both songs can return to the theme of seeking joy despite the difficulties, as Garrod sings on Dating 101: “Torn apart by modern methods/Hung, drawn, and quartered by the sheer amount of effort that dating without dating requires.”
The title track, and the final one, experiment with metaphors to explain Garrod’s raison d’être, and perhaps the album’s as well, as the chorus explains: “This is what I live for/Addictive in nature, a torturous overture/The ups and the downs.” It is an explanation of a love for creation, regardless of the cost or time spent. Garrod understands the work put into art does not often grant a reward of equal worth: “Another twenty grand easily spent just to wind up in the same old spot/Singing of romance ‘til I’m told to stop/Uploading the footage for no one else to watch.” And yet the acceptance of it – sung over rising strings in 3/4 time, a change from the rest of the album – still feels defiant.
If the crux of the album is “creation for creation’s sake, and living for living’s sake,” there’s no need to explain its mission or fit into established genres. On This Is What I Live For, That Old Quiet Lighthouse carves out a space in the musical landscape, stakes its claim to its cliffside, and sends out its beacon of light to anyone lost in the waters below, calling them home.
Written by Will Sisskind
