Leaning Over
wiffle ball, dad lore, and a band that came + went
In 1999, three grads from the Glasgow School of Art recruited a painter/sometimes-spoken-word-poet named Sue Tompkins to form the very short-lived project Life Without Buildings. The group would break up less than three years later with no intention of reforming, but managed to create something truly special with their only studio release: the poetic and singularly brilliant Any Other City.
In the years that followed, Any Other City slowly achieved critical and commercial acclaim, with “The Leanover” actually enjoying a random popularity spike on TikTok last year.
There’s an intentionality to the record’s perceived disorganization — like a child playing with its toys in a way that makes no sense to anyone except another who’s managed to hold onto that unique wisdom and curiosity of youth.
“Here are four musicians who have managed to recreate that sense of wonder and invention and play that most people (and, let’s face it, bands) lose when they get older . . . like an expression stammered out before you knew the proper rules of grammar, or a big word uttered before you knew how to pronounce it right. But who cares. If the sound doesn’t exist, she [Tompkins] seems to be saying, invent it. Which is exactly what Life Without Buildings did.” - Pitchfork, 2014
My first word was ‘truck’, and I could only eek out the last three letters.
I listen to Tompkins speak-sing in “The Leanover”, and I’m suddenly ten years-old at recess, exclaiming to my friend in broken, tired english for not passing me the ball with an open net. Or I’m twelve, and it’s summer, and I’m in the front yard with my brother as we invent ghost-runners to occupy the bases in our wiffle ball game.
In these moments, I’d unknowingly — in a way only a child unencumbered by experience can so clearly embody — chosen to be present in the flow of life without any specific outcome or result in mind.
This also meant that I ate way too much candy on Halloween, but only because I was living with a vicious imagination and appetite for life. I fearlessly embarked into the beautiful mystery of whatever-comes-next, trusting that I’d be okay.
Any Other City is a record brimming with a desire to create for creation’s sake — a process devoid of any preconceived need for what had to come after. In 2001, Life Without Buildings were booked as support for the Strokes’ first-ever London headliner, just months before the release of Is This It. They later clarified this as “a booking accident", with drummer Will Bradley elaborating further in 2009, telling Muso’s Guide:
“Our record label were trying to reinvent themselves with an eye on the indie big-time. I remember watching [The Strokes] for a few minutes, then I remember leaving… Whatever The Strokes were, in my mind at least we were a fundamentally different kind of thing to it. If we were where they were, then we were clearly in the wrong place.”
Granted, they could’ve just not liked the Strokes, but to actively position oneself away from a band with all of the raw ingredients for success is telling. Even just remaining neutral would’ve benefitted them in the singular, traditional sense.
I’d argue that the band’s slow, gradual success was a direct consequence of a collective detachment from anything other than an authenticity and willingness to do their own thing. It was just a hobby. Things like that have a way of finding you.
Various schools of thought adhere to the idea of impermanence — that everything, good or bad, is temporary and in constant change, and that attachment to things like happiness or grief or a predisposed idea of success is to take ourselves out of the very personal, transient experience of living. I doubt Sue Tompkins was thinking about any of this when she was writing the stutter-inflections she graces just about every song with, but that would also defeat the point. She was only thinking about the inflections. And then she wasn’t.
the good stuff
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Based Urban Dictionary: dad lore.
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Happy and healthy scrolling <3