Music can very much be a mood thing. People have songs they listen to when they feel down or ones that remind them of a special time. Another common theme is the going out or getting ready tune, that song you listen to as you leave the drudgery of work behind and head into the weekend. Since first stumbling across them at 2000 Trees in 2009, one band has been the sound track to my descent into debauchery more than any other and that band is Imperial Leisure.
When I caught them at 2000 Trees, it was the middle of the afternoon, they sounded interesting from their description in the program and we settled down in the field to check them out. We weren’t sat down for long; the band’s ska punk offerings had us skanking almost immediately. The tunes were infectious, the lyrics so catchy that you found yourself singing along to choruses of songs you’d never heard before. It was such a lively, energetic and memorable performance that I went looking for their material as soon as I returned home. What I found was the band’s début album The Art Of Saying Nothing, which has recently been added to Spotify.