‘…you missed the moon as you were waving goodbye….’

A band that definitely needs more love and exposure is Liverpool based Alright (okay). In my fantasy Tiggerliggerland, these guys would be selling out packed stadiums across the world, while Chris Martin would be somewhere out back pouring the punters overpriced warm tasteless lager while dreaming of what might have been if only his band hadn’t sounded quite so wet and smug.

This young band alright (okay) are still somewhat exploring their musical identity, so each new track is one of those unknown pleasures.

Here with their latest (October 2022), the rather mad Heavy Chair, fans of the likes of Idles, Shame or Augustines would be comfortable in their company. While each released track has its own identity, there’s a strong force of intensity which consistently flows through Alright (okay)’s work.

Aright (okay) – Alex Usher, Will Booth, James Byrne, and Jonah Lloyd tell me when the track was first created a few years ago (alright (okay) formed in 2018), they produced a poor quality crappy iphone voice recording of it. The phone had been placed on a deceptively heavy chair, so the voice note was christened “heavy chair”. Somehow the name of the song stuck as “Heavy Chair”. It could have been worse – ‘Downstairs Loo’ might have provided the band with a desired echo and become the name that stuck.

As the band say ‘deep’ and ‘meaningful’ are their middle names. Haha.

The lyrics in Heavy Chair hit hard. To my mind, it’s one where we might easily naively convince ourselves that purchases and choice means freedom. How our complex, twisted, mangled world manipulates us whatever we do. The vocals have an angry resigned feel to them. Wherever we look there is always someone lying to us, no?

You buy prescriptions, but you can’t buy freedom.

The sonic landscape is just as bleak and yet powerfully beautiful. The track at 4 mins 23 is just long enough to allow that rolling punchy trapped anger to create a lingering musical shape. It’s a sound I want to hear in a mosh. Alright (okay) have a couple of local Liverpool gigs coming up at Meraki as support to Alien Chicks on 27 Oct, and as support to Genn at Kazimier Stockroom on 9 November.

Tiggerligger

* images have been taken from the band’s social media