The Gig Monkey Review
Lucy Leave have been much hyped around Oxford, which is a perfect illustration of why I love the cities music scene so much, as they are gloriously off-kilter and left-field – exactly the sort of thing that has been struggling to gain an audience in recent years. Spiky, gnarled post-punk that is not an easy listen if linear, friendly music is your thing; this is math rock for the dyscalculic – it doesn’t make sense, and is wonderful because of it.
Highlight for me is the plaintive, jazz-funk weirdness of Nightroad; all haunting vocal lines and psychedelic swirls of guitar sounds. It is perhaps the most direct track on the record, and is followed up by possibly the most uncomfortable listen, the crunching arrhythmic noise of Grief. Lucy Leave are a band that seem to delight in making their audience uncomfortable and seem hell bent on being as unpredictable as possible – a mission that deserves to be applauded and supported.