Photo Credit: Charlie Barclay Harris
Early fans of Courting fell in love with their sardonic, post-punk festival bangers, which immediately got anybody between the ages of 16 and 24 within the nearby vicinity going feral in a mosh-pit. Their debut album, Guitar Music, indicated an evolution for the band, integrating distorted, glitchy pop sounds and a vibrant sense of sensory overload. New Last Name only confirms their innate desire to go against the grain, throw it all against a wall and mesh a track together from whatever chaos that creates.
New Last Name feels juvenile, oversaturated and almost facetious. None of these descriptions are intended as insults. Tackling, quite fittingly, modern courtship in the digital age, this album captures the feeling of navigating romance, flings and dancing round vulnerability as a young adult. Using glitching 808s, autotune as a design choice and an unending onslaught of pop culture references, Courting create catchy pop-punk-meets-hyperpop earworms that mirror the overwhelming sensory nightmare that is the internet. Bonus points for The Killers reference, naturally.
This is an album that represents the Gen Z experience, and it is perhaps for that reason that some of the singles for this album have been causing mixed opinions online. Chirping synth motifs on top of brass lines on top of a plethora of guitars on top of heavily filtered vocals on top of colourful drum lines isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But, in an age of 100 gecs and Bladee, the angle at which Courting are coming from, as a previously more cut-and-dry post-punk band, allows for a particularly interesting experiment.
At times, it does feel like the envelope may be veering on being pushed too far, particularly in tracks like The Hills, where seemingly out of nowhere we get a somewhat out of place afrobeat-esque 808 sequence. It’s a nice section, but it doesn’t feel completely at home within the track, which otherwise dazzles with roaring brass and crashing symbols. That being said, this slight disorientation occasionally on the album seems like a decent price to pay in order to experience some of the other beautiful marriages between elements, such as on We Look Good Together (Big Words), where Courting combine noughties inspired vocal stutters with jangly, funky indie guitars and saxophones. While the band may resent the comparison, this track in particular feels like an elevated, glitch-core The 1975 track, in the best way.
The chunky kick drum marching listeners into The Wedding is particularly effective, creating an incredibly textured, catchy track that echoes guitar driven Y2K boyband-ish garage-rock without losing the band’s sarcastic feel. They’re not afraid to shy away from pop music, instead recontextualising it into their sound, to create something refreshing rather than corporate. It’s a collage of inspirations, constructed in a way that feels current and dynamic. They repeatedly, successfully straddle the line of catchy and repetitive, which will make it all the more fun to enjoy screaming these tracks in a live setting.
This is a band who knows how to use sonic colour, and not just in brushstrokes here and there; New Last Name is more akin to makeshift theatre-kid prop making, taking the whole colour wheel for high impact. This makes sense, given the notable efforts by Courting to mark this album as a theatrical experience, online.
Closing out on America, Courting show another glimpse of vulnerability amidst a bombardment of digital references. From Street View, to reaction videos, to Amazon Prime, the album is very much embedded in the present. On this track, frontman Sean Murphy O’Neill assures the listener “I swear it’s just a reference you don’t get.” But for those that do have their brains wired into that high contrast, kaleidoscopic hyperspace that is the internet, this is an album to be thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed.
8/10
Standout Tracks: We Look Good Together (Big Words), Throw, America
For Fans Of: Home Counties, Folly Group, glaive
Written by: Izzy Morris
