Episodes 300 and 301 - Any Other City by Life Without Buildings

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In part one we chat a little about Life Without Buildings and their origins. In doing so, we're forced to reckon with the particular vocal style of Sue Tompkins. In some quarters it's been quite divisive (there's a particularly bad NME interview that is a good example of this) but really her style is part of a much longer and larger legacy, one that is still very much alive and kicking to this day. Yes, we're talking about spoke-sung artists, or more specifically the vocal techniques of sprechgesang and sprechstimme. In the latter half of this episode we go on a little journey through history to really show how these vocal styles have been a part of popular music for a very long time.

Modern post-punk music (the post-punk revival revival?) has a fair few acts that all indulge in sprechgesang and sprechstimme vocals. From Dry Cleaning and Squid to Idles and Fontaines D.C., there's a whole lot of artists out there using the same vocal technique that Sue Tompkins deploys effectively on Any Other City.

In part two we chat about modern examples of this sound, including a bunch of post-hardcore and punk bands that do it too. Then we dive headlong into Any Other City itself.