Math and Physics Club - Lived Here Before (2018)

Math and Physics Club's 4th album, Lived Here Before, sees the band stretching confidently into new territory while featuring all the carefully constructed pop handicraft we've come to expect from these Pacific Northwest lads. Working from a makeshift studio in the wilds of Snohomish, Washington, with fabled grunge producer Chris Hanzsek (Soundgarden, Green River), the band recorded 11 songs over 4 days in the company of Douglas firs and Swainson's Thrushes. Longtime fans will still recognise the band's upbeat sound set against often bittersweet storytelling, but there's also a darker, more world-weary undercurrent. The lead track Threadbare sets the tone with its Shins-esque beat and close-up intimacy, followed by a powerful pushme-pull-you between the verses and choruses, sweet and sad. The Pull of the Tides evokes bands like The Ocean Blue and The Softies and sets up one of the album's more subtle tracks, Like Cinnamon, which flips the dynamic between music and lyrics with its brooding backdrop. Side two's opener, Dear Madeline, is vintage Math and Physics Club with intertwining guitars and soft brushes beautifully set against one of the band's more poignant vignettes. The mood shifts to agitation with Take a Number which paints a more insidious type of darkness, fueled by its duelling guitar riffs and percussive flourishes. The album's title is also pulled from one of its lyrics. The album closes in characteristic economy with Drive to You which features an arrangement stripped down to simply two guitars and a lilting melody, accented with subtle organ. It's a fitting end note that reaches back to the band's earlier days and leaves us feeling a bit more sweet than bitter, which seems just about right. Math and Physics Club burst onto the scene in 2005 with their debut EP Weekends Away that garnered international attention. In 2016 they released a retrospective ( In This Together ), a collection of the previous 10 years of EPs, b-sides rarities, all available on vinyl for the first time, and their first release with Fika Recordings. Quotes - 'Weekends Away nips a classic Lucksmiths opening line for a title and sounds like The Clientele performing the first Smiths record-- after a Saturday night alone with Go-Betweens B-sides. In other words, yeah, I'm predisposed toward this stuff. That said, the songwriting does live up to its jangling guitars and roomy, Sarah Records-style production. Math and Physics Club set the match of literate, vivid lyrics and irrepressible melody to their faded-picturebook boy/ girl harmonies'. Pitchfork // 'Math and Physics Club have perfected what has always been their strongest trait: economy. In the lyrics, the tunes, the instruments...they have a way of keeping everything within their melodic pop songs lean, even elemental, and bowling you over with that simplicity.' Pop Matters // 'Charles Bert's vocals are still delightfully, if not eerily, smooth and Morrissey-like, and the songs themselves still draw from the heart-felt simplicity of bands like the Field Mice and the Orchids.'