Asylums: Signs Of Life
When a life in lockdown coincides with changing jobs, becoming a parent, and losing family members, it can get a little cloudy inside. We’ve all found our own ways of coping with life’s trials, but stowing away in the Welsh valleys to record an album in eight days at Rockfield Studios – where QUEEN recorded Bohemian Rhapsody – really takes the cake, right? Only, that’s exactly what ASYLUMS did to bring their fourth album, Signs Of Life, into the world.
Turns out rocking up to a studio and cutting your record live with nothing but your bandmates and influential producer Dave Eringa [IDLEWILD, MANIC STREET PREACHERS] is just the tonic your soul needs.
We’ve all got the songs that saved our lives, the ones we cuddle up to when the world’s chewed us up and spat us out. But for vocalist/guitarist Luke Branch, letting out songs like Instant Coffee – where strings and indie rock collide as a day in the life of the frontman unfolds – literally were lifesavers. Not because they changed his way of thinking, but because they allowed him to understand.
“I was very depressed when I wrote that song. It was a strange time for me, I’d become a father three months before lockdown happened and that was a huge emotional shift. It’s the best thing that has ever happened to me,” reflects Luke, as his tone shifts to sombre thoughts. “But there was a sadness that crept in. I couldn’t share it with my family, and I couldn’t see my band and I was finding almost everything very difficult. So that line, ‘try and work out why I’m here,’ I really was being genuine.”
That authenticity, that genuineness, and that honesty is what sets Signs Of Life apart for ASYLUMS. Whilst their peers craft entire worlds for you to escape to, they find comfort in the normalcy of everydayness. And it stems from the roots Luke was growing within himself.
“There’s this slow shift the mind and body take towards being a parent, so I would say I’m a changed person; a lot of the trivialities I’d get bogged down in historically just didn’t matter to me anymore. Being creative still really did matter though because that’s the thing I need for me to be happy and balanced.
For someone who’s spent most of their life “rattling around the London Underground trying to make stuff happen,” it’s all been a bit different for Luke, but ultimately “difference is okay as you get older.” Those little changes didn’t just save him, they helped shape Signs Of Life into the little slice of indie-rock heaven you hear in your headphones. It started with shaking up those routines we all get stuck in a rut with.
Whilst observing routines gave Luke plenty to dive into thematically, Signs Of Life continued to form around the breaking of his own habits and traditions. So much so, it started life out as a last-ditch attempt at a double album.
“The intention was to write a double album at first, just to set myself this ludicrous task, and I remember writing so many songs one week that my brain felt like it was melting, I had to go in the house and watch Field Of Dreams in the middle of lockdown; I hadn’t seen any nature for a while, I just needed to look at something with space and then nature became a recurring theme. I was watching things like Into The Wild and documentaries about the opposite of industrial landscapes, and that was feeding into the musical design of things.”
Nature’s hold on our world wasn’t just impacting the music, it fed into the very fabric of the record. Signs Of Life, like nature, is about finding your place within the cycles of life. Of course, it came with some soul-searching, too. “I have cycles of depression, and it’s not something I want to romanticise, it’s just a fact for me as a person and I’m high-functioning, so a lot of the time people don’t know and that’s fine, but I’ve got a better understanding the older I get about who I am and why I’m a bit of an empath and take a lot of baggage on and shit.”
“For me, it’s about the moment where things start to turn towards a more optimistic outlook and little by little you start to see positive things in your world again, so I never lose hope completely. I’m not a doom and gloom kind of guy, I’m just sensitive, but time passes, and something will happen, and someone shuts the curtains again and my behaviour won’t change to the outside world, but the interior world is different for me; so Signs Of Life is about spotting those things and putting it all back together again.”
In a time where our lives are constantly changing, the simple act of spotting those changes and putting them back together again is exactly what we need. And thanks to ASYLUMS, we’ve got a record to find that in, too.
Signs Of Life is out now via Cool Thing Records.
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