The Lounge Society - Tired Of Liberty (LP)

Tired Of Liberty arrives with the hot-wire crackle you’d expect from a Speedy Wunderground release, but there’s a particular sharpness to The Lounge Society’s debut that sticks. The Hebden Bridge quartet dropped it in August 2022, produced by Dan Carey at his Streatham studio, and it feels very much like a first album made on instinct, recorded fast enough to bottle the air in the room. You can hear the sweat and the second guesses, the rush to get an idea down before it cools. That’s the magic with Carey when he’s on this wavelength, and the band lean into it.

They came up young and fast, first with early singles like Generation Game, then the 2021 EP Silk For The Starving. The through-line into Tired Of Liberty is obvious, but the step up in scope is real. Cameron Davey’s vocals sit right on the edge of a shout, then drop into a mutter, and the rhythm section doesn’t let up. Archie Dewis has that clipped, kinetic drum sound that makes even the mid-tempo moments feel urgent, while Davey’s bass is all muscle and melody. Across it, the twin guitars of Herbie May and Hani Paskin-Hussain scratch, chime and slice, sometimes in the same bar. It’s a very British post-punk palette, but the writing has a melodic patience that keeps it from becoming just barked slogans over a motorik beat.

People Are Scary is the gateway track for a lot of listeners, and for good reason. It’s catchy without smoothing the edges, a proper earworm that still lands like a scowl. The lyric pokes at social dread with a cheeky grin, and the chorus lifts just enough to make you want to shout along. On the flip, there are tighter, more coiled tunes that treat rhythm like a weapon. Carey’s production keeps everything dry and close, with the room sound doing half the work. You can picture the band lined up, eyes on Dewis, stopping and starting in unison, then tumbling into a coda like they’re racing for the tape.

The political tint is there, but it never reads as a lecture. The Lounge Society write about the pressures and absurdities around them with a mix of spit and side-eye, and that balance gives the songs legs. It helps that they’re from West Yorkshire rather than the usual South London post-punk belt, because you can feel a different kind of grit in the storytelling. When they do let the songs breathe, you get flashes of space and melody that hint at how far they could push this. There’s a late-night quality to some of the quieter passages that sits nicely against the more serrated attacks.

Carey’s fingerprints are all over the sound in the best way. The guitars have that cranky, present midrange he loves, the kick is dry and forward, and the vocals are barely sweetened, as if any polish would ruin the point. He’s known for recording to capture performance rather than perfection, and Tired Of Liberty plays like a set you’d want to see at the Hebden Bridge Trades Club or down in a sweaty basement. It’s the kind of record where you notice tiny things on a second spin, a stray hi-hat bark or a guitar harmonic ringing a touch longer than it should, and those details make it feel lived in.

This one translates beautifully to wax. The dynamics hit harder, and that taut low end does wonders on a decent setup. If you’re crate-digging for The Lounge Society vinyl, the Tired Of Liberty vinyl pressing is worth snapping up before it vanishes to Discogs purgatory. We’ve had folks in our Melbourne record store ask for it off the strength of a single play, which tells you how immediate it is. If you buy The Lounge Society records online, keep an eye out for Speedy Wunderground editions, since their cuts tend to be solid. For anyone hunting The Lounge Society albums on vinyl in particular, it sits nicely next to other label standouts in a stack of vinyl records Australia collectors lean on to test a new amp.

What lingers after a week with the album is the sense of a band refusing to coast. Debuts can feel like calling cards, a quick hello before the “real” work starts. This feels like the real work, already, with enough hooks to bring you back and enough bite to make you listen closer. There’s youthful fire here, sure, but also craft, a grip on dynamics and arrangement that a lot of bands don’t get to for another few years. Put simply, it sounds like a group that knows who they are, captured by a producer who knew to get out of the way and let them prove it.