Luminaries of the Manchester music scene, even sharing the same management as The Stone Roses at one time, The Creature Comfort are gearing up for the release of their second album late in 2019 with a string of appetite-whetting singles.
‘Life’s A Crime’, out March 15 on Missing Door/AWAL, is precisely the kind of high octane garage rock workout that has made them an unmissable live act on the Manchester circuit. There are nods to the primal grooves of The Stooges and MC5 and the psych dimensions of the legendary ‘Nuggets’ compilation, but the cherry on top is singer Ben Le Jeune’s existential vocal, cataloguing his rage at living life on the breadline and the unabashed greed of capitalism.
“Lyrically the song has a triptych format,” says Le Jeune of the song, “and here I’m thinking of a Bosch painting – with words rooted deep in my personal history, and each of the three sections a different take on an overall theme. Overall it’s about how tough life can be – and what’s the root cause, and what can we do to make things better?”
The charismatic singer stars in the video, directed by Brad Ingham (HAZY, Sylvette, Young Monarch, Anna Mcluckie, Rowan Lark) for 491 Film Co and premiered exclusively here, wandering lonely as a cloud of skunk smoke through various locations in Manchester city centre. The swanky high rise monuments to gentrification provide an intimidating and mocking backdrop, as he declares “I can’t find my way around, they’ve bought the whole town.”
Look closely and you’ll spot Salford’s Blueprint Studio, oft frequented by The Fall and The Creature Comfort’s base, the Eagle Inn, the newly created gentrified Spinningfields area near the Law Courts – seemingly now private land as the band were swiftly ejected from it – during the shoot, the Northern Quarter, Oldham Street’s Night & Day Cafe and Piccadilly Gardens, “such an iconic space in the city,” says Ben, “yet somehow sadly ruined.”
