Of all the names I expect to show up in my news feed, Life Without Buildings is damn well near the bottom. To call the Glaswegian quartet a cult band is to give them too much profile; they had a lifespan of three years around the turn of the century, released one album – 2001’s wonderful Any Other City – and only returned to any kind of prominence via their song “The Leanover” becoming a TikTok blip four years ago and their indie-Sprechgesang formula coming into vogue almost like clockwork two decades later. But with a steadfast refusal to reunite and their post-breakup archives seemingly amounting to a single Australian live recording – Live At The Annandale Hotel, released in 2007 and pressed to vinyl for Record Store Day this past April – anything amounting to news seemed highly unlikely. And yet, here we are.
Those who look closely at their Discogs might notice a CD single released in 2001 that does not match up with the Any Other City tracklisting, and that’s because “Love Trinity” was put out in December of that year on an Australian label ahead of the tour that yielded the above live album, and the studio version did not exist in any other form… until now. Or five weeks from now, or so.
The last song the band ever recorded will be reissued as a special 7″ coming on November 21. Guitarist Robert Dallas Gray has some recollections of the song:
It’s nice to mark “Love Trinity”, as a song — it’s always felt like it slipped through the cracks a bit. It was the last song we recorded, one of the last we wrote. We recorded it as a one-off single for Trifekta Records in Australia, to promote the tour we were going to do there. I think it felt quite different from the other stuff; it came out of Chris’s bassline (which a lot of things did), and it had the delay effect on the guitar, and the sort of big guitar solo. There’s even a part where Sue’s vocals are multi-tracked — so whereas all the previous stuff had deliberately been very dry and live sounding, it was more of a sort of atmospheric thing. I don’t think it was anyone’s favourite at the time, but a lot of people we knew loved it and said it was the best thing we’d done. For me it’s taken on more importance over time, because it feels like a swansong, I guess.
Robert Dallas Gray, Life Without Buildings
Life Without Buildings – “Love Trinity” @ Errol’s Hot Wax
And singer Sue Tompkins adds:
Where have 24 years gone? I just hope it sounds good and is a nice object to have and hope it captures something about that moment in time when we recorded it.
Sue Tompkins, Life Without Buildings
Life Without Buildings – “Love Trinity” @ Errol’s Hot Wax
It’s only the A-side on the 7″ – an etching graces the flipside of the vinyl – which raises the question, will the other tracks on that original CD single – “Is Is & The IRS” and “Daylighting” – see the light of day at some point? I’ll keep an eye on my news feeds.
And oh, this actually isn’t the first time they’ve popped up. Guitar.com, of all places, paid tribute to Any Other City as a genius record in 2022, after my last post on the band. Check it out:
The Genius Of… Any Other City by Life Without Buildings @ Guitar.com
And if it wasn’t clear, the song as a composition has been available to hear for some years as part of Annandale Hotel; just not the original studio recording.
