Album Review: We Lived Our Lives On Top Of This

Lake McKenna, aka Lake South (the person), leads Lake South (the band), who this month have released their fourth album, We Lived Our Lives On Top Of This. Lake (the person) previously was the protagonist behind Urbantramper (who released five albums between 2003 and 2013), and since then lead critically acclaimed music project, ostensibly a solo project, through three well received albums – If You’re Born On An Island The Ocean Heals You, Wellington, and The Light You Throw. Lake appears to have hit his / their stride(s) on their latest We Lived Our Lives On Top Of This. In this recorded he’s joined by Theo Sekeris (Ras Judah, Rubita) on bass, Eddie Crawshaw (Sheep Dog & Wolf, Bonaparte) on drums, and Penelope Esplin (French for Rabbits, Eigenface) on harmonies and synths.

Is the lengthening stride only self-proclaimed or something more? “Lake South takes the best of the Aotearoa New Zealand songwriting tradition and infuses it with raw emotion and electronics. Defiant, DIY, indie anthems for people who give a damn,” their promotional materials tell us. Lofty stuff indeed, and music about which we are told we should feel a particular way. “These are the kind of songs that make you want to run down an empty street at dusk, screaming your heart out for a better future,” we’re told.

Ambition, effort and creativity are clearly commodities not in short supply here. There are multi-layered synths and electronic drums, glistening backing vocals, there’s spoken political poetry between tracks, and its consistent in form across the ten tracks and 43 minutes. This is electro pop for grownups, with indie and homemade elements – sounding exactly like where Lake seems to have come from: from a band based in Aotearoa but almost constantly on the move, in and out of flats, with stuff in storage, vanning between Wellington and Auckland.

Indeed, this is “Music from Aotearoa” their web site states on the landing page, and you’d need be hard pressed to miss that Wellingtonian McKenna is anchored to these islands and their places. In the second line of the first song, he remembers living near Auckland’s Sandringham. The second song Auckland (So Close To Nothing At All) references Union Street in its first line. Elsewhere there’s Moxham Ave (Hataitai, Wellington), Norway Street (Avo Valley, Wellington). Written and recorded over the last three years, while Lake had his first child, these songs seem to be recollections of times and places gone, previous hangouts, meditations on changes occurring here that that might not be for the best, memories of many an old friend, rent increases …. “Now I’m passing out water / As we link arms with strangers / You came all the way from Wellington / I came looking for fun / Just faking it till Sunday night / Just clinging on / Just clinging on / Just clinging on …” These reflections are at once specific (the locations) and obscure (their context, those involved and what they meant). It makes for a dense and ambiguous piece that takes time to digest and find meaning in, whilst also being so clearly specific to New Zealand and its particulars. It struck me as at once broad in ambition but self-limiting because it seems to deliberately to apply only to here, with any universality intentionally prevented from seeping into our interpretations.

This density met with matter-of-fact references to past events, perhaps will lead some to do what Lake South ask of them – to run down an empty street at dusk, your heart screaming.

To Know This Dirt and the incredible and shimmering Auckland (So Close To Nothing At All) are – one hates to use the word – effortless and certainly do inspire something at an emotional level. Can We Hold This Ground also holds together with something of a melodic structure (not so much predictable as familiar in its form). From here though, I found the density increases, the use of autotune and complex processing effects increases, and the songs tend to drop anything much of convention or predictability. I had to work hard to spot the melodies and any recurring refrains, and even after multiple listens struggled to remember a refrain from the second part of the album. Auckland, by contrast, stuck in my head for days.

For me, this record is part of a narrow and hard to define category of albums (which as yet I have not named) which includes Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion and Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest (weirdly, both 2009 albums). Possible further contenders are Bon Iver’s i,i (at least parts of it) and Planetarium (Sufjan Stevens’ collaboration with Bryce Dessner and others). This is the type of music where I remain torn by it. Critics hailed these albums. On one side, I can’t help but feel this must be music of some significant inventiveness and that it breaks new ground. On the other, it’s just so difficult to listen to. I feel I am closed-minded; I am ignorant, I lack the intellectual grunt to understand it and appreciate this music in the manner intended, and I just find it so hard to enjoy. Appreciate or admire, perhaps yes, but hard to listen to. Should I trust my judgment to date and give up, or persist in faith that within these songs lies something incredible others have seen I am yet to? In those cases, the numbers suggest it’s me who’s wrong and the other critics are right.

Judge for yourself. In Lake South’s case, I don’t think this is music that pumps your brain full of endorphins on the first or second listen, or even the tenth. This is work that clearly took effort to put together and demands effort of the listener. Listen and listen and listen, I would suggest and then decide.