ALBUM REVIEW: Real Lies – Lad Ash

Unreal

Released: 22.04.22

Real Lies have carved a very specific niche of using the vocabulary of early 90s dance and rave music, two-step and UK garage, and juxtaposing it with a very contemporary approach to poetic urbanism. The music bleeds London and the adjacent satellite towns, the post-club feeling of being sat on a night bus with your ears ringing, and all of the euphoria, melancholy and opportunity that that feeling encompasses.

Seven years since their eponymous debut, they tap into the same sonic and thematic material, but Lad Ash is a considerable improvement on the debut. Gorgeous centrepiece Late Arcades is a song of hedonism and self-reflection in equal measure; An Oral History Of My First Kiss is a gorgeous reminiscence of formative years. On Lad Ash, Real Lies are alchemists – making music that is in equal part for the head, the heart and the gut.