After four years of quiet graft and creative wandering, LIFE are back — and they’re sounding more open, curious, and fired-up than ever.
The Hull alternative collective have announced their fourth studio album, ‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL,’ landing on 19 June 2026 via Launchpad+ in partnership with EMI North. Alongside the announcement comes the record’s lead single The Dollywaggon, a bold, restless reintroduction that feels like a band stepping into fresh air.
A journey song, in every sense
The Dollywaggon crackles with razor-edged guitars, swirling synths, and hyper-precise drumming, while frontman Mez Sanders-Green delivers vivid, near stream-of-consciousness reflections on movement, escape, and self-reckoning. Lines like “I never wanted to leave myself, but I’m leaving now” land with quiet weight, driven by a restless pull towards the unknown.
The track was written while Mez walked the full 193-mile UK coast-to-coast route, tracing a physical and emotional path from the West Coast, through the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, across the moors, and finally back home to the East Coast. You can hear that landscape baked into the song — it moves, climbs, pauses, and pushes forward again.
“The universal theme is about letting go and moving on — new adventures and beginnings,” Mez explains. “I like to think it sounds like a pulpy Northern-based western… Mother Earth always winning. In many ways, the track became the blueprint for the whole record.”
An album shaped by landscape and instinct
That sense of motion runs right through ‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’. Folklore-tinged characters and place-names sit alongside reflections on fatherhood, freedom, and personal evolution. The album began life as a poetry book Mez had been quietly writing — meditations on nature, love, acceptance, and release — before melodies started to surface inside the words.
These fragments arrived at the band as what Mez calls “wonky lullabies,” turning hills, ridges, and landmarks into characters: Hen Comb, Pavey Arc, Sergeant Man, The Grey Friar, The Dollywaggon. From there, Stewart Baxter, Lydia Palmeira, and Mick Sanders shaped the music instinctively, building a vivid, interconnected world that feels both intimate and wide-open.
Built at home, shared outward
Produced by Stewart Baxter and Oliver Varga, mixed by James Kenosha and mastered by Stephen Kerrison, the album was recorded at LIFE’s own Hull studio, The Moon Factory — a DIY space the band built themselves and now run as a creative hub for emerging Northern artists.
The result is LIFE’s most expansive and exploratory record to date: story-rich, emotionally grounded, and deeply rooted in place, without ever feeling boxed in by it.
‘ABSTRACT / NATURAL’ track list
- Wild Grasses
- The Dollywaggon
- Turning In
- Thistles Kiss
- Mermaid Feet
- My Yan
- Drinking Games
- Sun In Nancy
- Buried Giant
- Morning Fog
With praise already stacking up — from “raggedly brilliant tunes” (The Guardian) to “one of the essential bands of the moment” (Dork) — LIFE’s return feels less like a comeback and more like a confident stride into their next chapter.
New ground. Same fire.
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