REAL LIES – “LAD ASH” (Released 7th October 2022)

Description

//Unreal//

£22.99 – 2xLP, Limited Edition Blue Gatefold Vinyl

£21.99 – 2xLP, Standard Edition Vinyl

London electronic act Real Lies combine classic English pop-poetic story-telling with the uncanny rainswept atmospheres of auteurs like Claude Young, Drexciya and Richard D James. On their second album, lyricist Kevin Lee Kharas romanticises ecstasy-fuelled teenage joyrides that set the coordinates for two decades of thrill-seeking hedonism. A wild period that resulted in both the group’s euphoric 2015 debut Real Life and the prolonged six-year wait for its follow up.

In places, that euphoria remains – they’ve never sounded higher than on ‘Dream On’ – but generally the mood here is darker, more late-night, club-ready and ruminative. There are songs about losing childhood friends in mysterious circumstances (‘Dolphin Junction’), bandmates (‘Boss Trick’ is a wake for former member Tom Watson), childhood innocence (‘An Oral History Of My First Kiss’) and huge swathes of memory (‘The Carousel’). As the title implies, Lad Ash is a coming-of-age album that draws out the beauty and longing of the young British male experience by reframing it through an elegiac, at times almost gothic, lens.

Tracklisting:

1. Ethos
2. Boss trick
3. An oral history of my first kiss
4. Dream on
5. Late arcades
6. Thameslink tryst
7. Dolphin junction
8. All good dogs
9. Since I
10. The carousel
11. Your guiding hand
12. Dicaprio
13. You were in love
14. I wander
15. Oh me, oh my (nicotine patch)
16. Birds