Lifesigns Unleashes Soaring Prog Rock with "Altitude"
John Young and company have unleashed their best album yet in 2021.
Welcome to a special bonus issue of Michael’s Record Collection. Thanks to all subscribers who get it for free every week in their inbox and to those who check it out on Substack. If you’re one of the latter, why not sign up? I won’t spam your email and you’ll get one of these newsletters every week (and, occasionally, more than one). Upcoming issues include my interview with UK singer/songwriter Chantel McGregor and drummer/vocalist Gil Moore from Canadian power trio Triumph. I love bringing you the stories behind great music and I sure could use your help.
If you’re the kind of person who likes to support small, independent businesses, I invite you to check out the various levels of support at the MRC Patreon page, with escalating value based on your level of support. I’ll be starting random weekly prize drawings as soon as I reach a minimum number of Patreon subscribers, so you could win cool stuff (CDs, books, DVDs, etc.). Your Patreon support enables me to upgrade equipment and offset operational costs, so thanks to those who have already signed up.
Or, if you just prefer to get this content for free, I invite you to at least subscribe to the MRC YouTube channel to be alerted when new interviews go live, follow the MRC on Twitter and on Instagram, and like Michael’s Record Collection on Facebook. Every follower/like/subscriber helps the cause and those cost you nothing.
OK, now here’s the bonus issue in which I’m discussing the newest release from progressive rock band Lifesigns.
John Young started his prog rock outfit, Lifesigns, based on a bet in a pub, and, with the quality of the band’s recent third album Altitude, it’s clear that he not only won the bet, but he and his bandmates have also developed the group into something music fans can bet on.
“I said something about I didn't think in the mid-2000s that there were that many new, unique prog bands around,” Young said. “And somebody said, ‘Well, if you think you can do any better…’ and it was red rag to a bull time and we kind of kicked off from there.”
The band began with Young on keyboards and vocals, Frosty Beedle on drums, Steve Rispin contributing sound and production, and Nick Beggs on bass. Multiple guitarists, including ex-Genesis man Steve Hackett, Robin Boult (Fish), and Thijs van Leer (Focus), played on the self-titled debut album, which came out in February of 2013. A heavily progressive release, Lifesigns sold well enough to earn a place on the UK top 100 album chart.
Lifesigns has always been comprised of guys playing in other bands as well and some of those outside commitments led to some early lineup changes. Bassist Beggs departed and was replaced by Jon Poole. Niko Tsonev came in to play guitar.
After a live album and DVD release, the band released Cardington in 2017 through a successful crowdfunding campaign. Cardington was a more accessible album, as the band started to find its sound, and the second album also performed well, reaching the top 10 in the Amazon national chart and number four in the UK Indie chart. It helped the band build its fan base among progressive rock aficionados as well.
More turnover followed, with Tsonev embarking on a solo career and the talented Dave Bainbridge (The Strawbs, Iona) stepping in on guitar and additional keyboards. Beedle left in 2020, and his replacement, ex-Flower Kings drummer Zoltán Csörsz, was found through a twist of fate.
“I'm quite a spiritual character, and so a lot of things are kind of meant to be and weird stuff happens and all that kind of thing happens on a very regular basis,” Young explained. “So, we finished off the last gig we were doing in South End and it's very old fashioned. It's like 1950s Britain, you know, and there's a pier, and you can go for a ride on a locomotive on the pier. And we were all a bit down because nobody really wanted Frosty to go, but he had other things he had to do.”
Someone suggested Young go ask a fortune-telling machine in the arcade what to do about the drumming situation, and that’s where he got the name of the next Lifesigns drummer.
“I don't necessarily know whether we actually got the thing to work, but the machine was called Zoltan,” Young said with a laugh. “Dave said that he knew Zoltan (Csörsz) from the Flower Kings. He didn’t actually know him that well, but might it be an idea to give him a go on the drums? We managed to find a way to get in touch and he was just lovely. He kind of said he was looking for something.”
Young sent the Hungarian the beginning of the song “N” from Cardington, which was a challenging piece that other drummers had taken weeks to learn, play, and get back to him.
“Zoltan got back to us three hours later,” Young said. “Done. Finished. I was like, ‘OK, that works. That’s fine.’”
The band started recording Altitude and it was done remotely due to the pandemic. In fact, the other guys in Lifesigns have yet to even meet Csörsz in person.
Once again, the band crowdsourced the funding for the album, quickly reached the target number, and put out what is, in my view, the best Lifesigns record to date.
The album is bookended by the 15-minute epic title track “Altitude” and a more electronic-sounding shorter “Altitude Reprise.” “Altitude” tells the story of a drone pilot questioning the morality of what he’s doing. It sounds to me like Young is channeling Nick Kershaw with his vocal phrasing at times on the epic, but he said that was unintentional.
“I think each song demands a certain way of being interpreted,” he said. “I can't really sing heavily. There are a couple of sections where I sing a bit more sort of in your face on the album but I'm not a rock singer in that respect. I'm more a storyteller, I guess.”
Storyteller or not, Young’s vocals are smooth and melodic and fit his songs perfectly.
The second track, “Gregarious,” is the album’s poppiest song. While it’s fair to call it the most accessible track on the album, that doesn’t speak to Altitude being dense. It’s a melodic rock album that is more of a companion to Cardington than the heavily progressive self-titled debut album. The band is finding its sound and getting better at delivering it.
“Gregarious” could be a pop hit, but it’s intelligent pop in the vein of Asia, Talk Talk, or the Alan Parsons Project.
“We knew there’d have to be a single on this and we'd already started playing ‘Gregarious’ live,” Young said.
Young should know his way around a pop song. He has played with Asia and John Wetton in the past and he’s a touring musician in Bonnie Tyler’s band. He’s also played with the Scorpions.
“Ivory Tower” is one of two tracks originally released earlier in Young’s career (“Last One Home” is the other) and reworked for Altitude. The two reworked songs are my two favorites on the album.
“What we've been doing was bringing in songs that had meant something and saying, ‘Okay, we'll do a couple of those on the album, and we'll do some new stuff,’” Young said. “’Ivory Tower’ meant a lot to me because it was about a relationship I went through that went horribly wrong. And it's got some angst in there which I think works quite well.”
“Ivory Tower” starts as a gorgeous ballad with intricate acoustic guitar beneath a recurring, chiming keyboard sequence. The tempo of the song kicks into a higher gear past the halfway mark. Young said the chiming keyboard riff came from his interesting songwriting technique called channeling.
“The chimes were the first time I ever channeled music. So, I was trying to write a song with my right hand, and my left hand started playing that chime part,” Young explained. “And I looked at my left hand, as if to say, ‘Okay, can you give that to the right hand?’ which it did, and then the rest of the song built from there.”
The beautiful acoustic guitar in “Ivory Tower” isn’t Bainbridge, but rather Boult, who had played that part on the original recording of the song.
“The part that he'd already done previously just fit so beautifully that there was no reason to put anything else in,” Young said.
Bainbridge especially shines on “Shoreline” and “Last One Home.” The latter allows him to mimic the styles of two well-known progressive rock giants, with a bit of Steve Howe-like guitar from the “Soon” section of “The Gates of Delirium” at the beginning of the song and something a bit more like David Gilmour of Pink Floyd later in the track. Lifesigns somehow can bring out flavors of some of progressive rock’s top acts without completely copying the recipe.
Altitude will more than satisfy virtually any progressive rocker’s hunger for the comfort food their ears crave. But, more than that, the listener doesn’t have to be a prog fan to enjoy this new Lifesigns album. The rock is melodic, accessible, and the band serves the songs with sufficient prowess without resorting to flaunting their playing chops in the listener’s face.
You can hear some brief clips from Altitude in Episode 32 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast.
For more information on Lifesigns or to purchase Altitude on CD, vinyl, or digital, visit the band’s website.
For my full interview with John Young, please check out the video below. I enjoyed talking music with John and he fully admits that progressive rock is in a much better place than when he made his pub bet that initially launched Lifesigns. In fact, he gave me a lengthy list of the bands he’s been enjoying recently. He also talked about his philosophy on putting value back into music and many other topics.