The Leisure Society – Alone Aboard the Ark (2013)

I listen to a lot of music at work nowadays. I sit in a open space of desks and listening to music can block other sounds away easily so that I can concentrate to what I'm doing. Sometimes when I'm doing work that doesn't require so much focused concentration, I can actually also pay attention to the music I'm listening to. In this way I have found a number of new bands. I listen to playlists that Spotify suggests to me based on my previous favourites and I listen to many albums that I find from record store lists of albums. The Leisure Society was one of those bands that I bumped into a couple of times from both of these sources. I really liked their laid back folky indie pop and when I saw the CD with nice cardboard covers in a record store, I bought it. I listen to this album quite regularly nowadays.



This album is a prime example of the kind of indie folk genre that I really enjoy nowadays. Playing in one myself. Ever since I have moved to UK I have started appreciating authentic and acoustic sounds more. It seems like people here still appreciate good technical skills at playing acoustic instruments more than people in Finland where people seem to be much more following the latest trends, which in the recent years have been more electronic. I guess it's because I play music myself, but I just get so much more out of bands where I can clearly hear how the individual instruments are played.

This album sounds quite upbeat and happy. Fight for Everyone is outright cheerful. There are some exceptions to that rule though. The Sober Scent of Paper sounds a bit more like the melancholic singer-songwriter folk that I usually like to listen to. There's some excellent use of flute and banjo on that song as well. One Man And His Fug is a great and melodic song that sounds like it's gotten most of its influences from The Beatles. The marching band rhythms are probably the reason for that. Forever Shall We Wait reminds me of some The Shins songs. There's a similar kind of beat to that song.

As you might expect from a modern indie band that has great album art in their album covers, The Leisure Society has some great music videos. It's all very simple really, but I like the music video for Fight for Everyone. It's an animated video with naivisticly drawn scenes of funny things. These kinds of music videos I really miss watching from the time when music television still played music videos. I think it would be great to re-establish music video channels, but instead of mainstream, they should show the artistic music videos by smaller bands. These kinds of channels must already exist online, but I haven't really found a good one yet.

The Leisure Society is a good reminder of the fact that there are still some excellent no-nonsense indie bands that play melodic songs with real instruments. I just wish they would get a bit more visibility for the masses as well.

Listen to the album on Spotify.