The Late Greats - Life Without Balloons

Track Listing: 1. Futures Gold 2. The City Swallowed You Whole 3. He’s Not It 4. Kitty 5. Destroy My Brain 6. Gareth 7. Quick Fix 8. Stereo 9. Let it Happen 10. Surrender. In The Late Greats’ own words, this album was influenced by: “the surroundings of a seaside town, dead friends, hating the city and what it does to your girlfriend, hopeful musings about a better life with better people, and of course, love.”  Sandwiched between Brighton & Hastings, the seaside town of Eastbourne is the unlikely outpost and home to future alt-rock heroes, The Late Greats.  In equal parts intelligent, intense, chaotic and fragile, the four piece have quietly bided their time over the last 12 months, writing their debut album (in between epic bouts of table tennis) thus honing the sound of The late Greats. Life Without Balloons is a record indebted to the band’s love of lo-fi US indie/alt-rock (Sonic Youth, Pixies, Pavement) but stamped with a truly provincial, English delivery glittering with melodic gold. The band’s duel lead vocalists Max Arnold and Ryan Griffiths have the uncanny knack of making the most melancholic of melodies sound uplifting and life affirming. To this affect, The City Swallowed You Whole intersperses a chest rattling moog bass line with sweetly resigned vocals, whilst Surrender’s bittersweet, relationship-in-meltdown lyrics -“I’m about to surrender / take that ribbon off my finger” – belie the overwhelmingly positive sing-a-long chorus. The whole climatic chorus is so maudlin and urgent you can almost feel the sea rain lashing down on Eastbourne at closing time on a cold, drunk Friday night.Touring and gigging over the last year with the likes of Late of the Pier, Blood Red Shoes and Hot Club de Paris has developed the Late Greats into an incredibly tight and thrilling live band

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