Formed in Bristol, 4-piece LICE have become one of UK experimental rock\u2019s most inventive and ambitious outliers. Their second album\u00a0\u2018Third Time At The Beach\u2019\u00a0\u2013 a three-part epic exploring our struggle to better understand the world around us \u2013 arrives\u00a0on the September 20th\u00a0via AD 93. Darting between minimalism, rock, techno and more, it sends us hurtling us through time and space: featuring a cast of astronauts, cavemen and dinosaurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This follows LICE\u2019s internationally acclaimed debut album\u00a0\u2018WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear\u2019 (2021). Praised as \u201cexciting, alive, packed with musical ideas<\/em>\u201d by Financial Times and \u201ca welcome lease of life for British avant-rock that plays with expectation at every turn<\/em>\u201d by CRACK, it also gained radio support across BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1 and KEXP. The album led LICE to perform at major festivals including Reading & Leeds, Green Man and End Of The Road, embark on an extensive EU tour supporting Sleaford Mods, and tour across the UK & EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tour dates<\/strong> The \u2018Third Time At The Beach\u2019 concept is expressed through three movements. The first (Unscrewed<\/em>, White Tubes<\/em>, Red Fibres<\/em>) presents the child being introduced to the world, hammered into shape through prevailing culture, and realising they have reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world. The second (To The Basket<\/em>, Wrapped In A Sheet<\/em>, Scenes From The Desert<\/em>, Mown In Circles<\/em>) is a disorientating, alien sequence: re-evaluating fundamental concepts including money, time, nationhood and language. In the third (Fatigued<\/em>, Confused<\/em>, Third Time At The Beach<\/em>, The Dance<\/em>), the individual embraces these new ideas \u2013 granting them a changed understanding of the world, and more agency in the path they take through it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything is always changing in\u00a0\u2018Third Time At The Beach\u2019. The album shifts from lush piano balladry to crushing industrial, and from swampy avant-garde compositions to triumphant rock freakouts. Employing vocal manipulation and field recordings, as well as cutting together studio recordings and home demos, the band produces a spatially elastic, collage-like effect. The album, like the ideas being reached within it, presents a work-in-progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lyrically, the record employs a scattershot style to present the experience of learning (or \u2018unlearning\u2019). The listener visits ancient civilisations, the Industrial Revolution, outer space and the land of the dinosaurs: encountering mediaeval farmers, silver miners, cavemen, Napoleon and Satan. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking on the record, the band say:\u00a0\u201cThis album\u2019s about trying to understand the world and everything in it: history, science and the way we explain it all to each other. It\u2019s a celebration of feeling confused or intimidated by the processes that shape our lives.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Of the album\u2019s muscular, agitated lead single Red Fibres<\/em>, LICE explain: \u201cThis song is about realising you\u2019ve reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world, and feeling confused and frustrated. After visiting some key moments in the history of language, science and the human eye, we arrive at a campsite: where two shipwreck survivors are about to have a fight.\u201d<\/em> Watch the video for Red Fibres<\/em> via YouTube below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
29 May\u00a0–\u00a0London – Third Man Records<\/a>
30 May\u00a0–\u00a0Bristol – The Crofters Rights<\/a>
19 Oct\u00a0– Falmouth – FIVES
21 Oct\u00a0– Birmingham – Hare & Hounds 2
22 Oct\u00a0– Glasgow – Hug & Pint
23 Oct\u00a0– Manchester – The Castle
24 Oct\u00a0– London – Corsica Studios<\/p>\n\n\n\n