“This is definitely the best looking crowd I’ve ever seen! You people are beautiful!” Lifestyle vocalist Sean T. Drinkwater shouted to the random listeners gathered at the front room of the Paradise last Saturday night in an effort to appeal to their egos for support. If an audience defines the sound of the band, there really is no way to describe Lifestyle — the group somehow managed to draw a mixed bag of sullen indie-rockers, drunken college students, grinning thirty-somethings and several individuals who just may have been Duran Duran reborn.
Lifestyle, formed in 1996 as a 10-12 piece band, released its debut record At the Risk of Sounding Pretentious (The Archenemy Record Company) and bonus CD Companion in 1998. The group then cut its members down to the tighter, key four: Drinkwater, synthesizer player “The Captain” Boothnavy Swallow, rhythm-master/synth operator Damascus Trolley and guitarist Aug “Rock” Stone. They have spent the last eighteen months producing their second album, Urbia, to follow their new EP Frontier, choosing from nearly 40 new songs, “using new wave influences as a backdrop for more straight-ahead pop songs,” as they stated on their website, “and we’re having an insane amount of fun.”
With a live energy that is completely infectious, Lifestyle picks up where new wave left off years ago. The songs are mainly about the girl or boy you are crushing on, like the hilarious fourth track off Frontier, “Are You Coming On To Me?” (“You’re a cool girl with real cool jeans / We know that your best friend is my ex-girlfriend / And she’s a human who’s insane / Oh are you coming on to me? / For a night of unbridled lust / With the bridesmaid she thought she could trust.”) Lyrically, they are somewhat one-dimensional and silly, but Lifestyle’s songwriting skills are not lacking in technique. Drinkwater’s vocals combine sexual power and a boyish charm apparent in his smooth disco undulations, and the rest of the band puts out their image in a giddy way that says dance, please. Because of the small venue, Drinkwater was able to coax the audience into motion; pointing, jumping on and off the stage and weaving through the crowd at will. Girls screamed and reached out to touch his leather jacket as if he were a lesser version of Bono — and he appeared to love every hyped-up second. Stone sported a sparkly, pink feather boa, which he alternately wore or tossed out to the crowd, and Swallow and Trolley fed off their frenzy.
Lifestyle required an open mind and dancing shoes live and Frontier is no different. It is not the kind of CD you can play with a low to medium volume control — it begs to be blasted, if for the first track “My Favorite Song.” While the song’s chorus is somewhat of a cop-out —Drinkwater crooning “la la la la la” to the beat, the verses are cutely introspective, and the sound is ’80s without any annoying and whiny wailing. Due to Stone’s ripping cuts on the guitar, their brand of synth pop has somehow managed to include a rare dash of rock-and-roll sensibilities.
What could possibly top off an EP or show more than a tune entitled “I’d Really Like to Make Out With You?” The crowd bopped along in unison to the upbeat half-ballad, half self-deprecating anthem. “Tell me how you’re feeling / I’d really like to make out with you / We can keep our clothes on / You can show me the door / Cause I know you don’t believe when I say I don’t want more.” The already spirited crowd was intoning the lyrics along with Drinkwater by the end of this gem.
While synth pop circa Magnetic Fields and New Order can prove to be irritatingly mellow, Lifestyle is pure, unfiltered, happy music. There is nothing groundbreaking or particularly unique about that in terms of where music is progressing today —but really, is there anything wrong with that? Finding a band that can take something that most people break out for secret dance parties and turning it into digitized, poptronica burst of sound is just … fun. These endearing boys may be newcomers to an old trend, but they put the cryptic smiles back on the faces of new wave lovers.
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