the talk-singing of sue tompkins in the afterlife of life before buildings.
How to describe the talk-singing of Life Before Buildings lead singer Sue Tompkins?
Her voice, which drove the brief but brilliant band from 1999 to 2002, hurled accusations like poisonous darts, but the question was always whether those darts were in fact boomerangs.
As she repeated phrases over and over again — “my lips are sealed” on “Juno”; “high heels” and other phrases on “The Leanover”; “I forgot” on the breathtaking “New Town” — one started to wonder: was she seething at someone else (a boy, an authority figure, the world?) or was she angry at herself? Or both?
Life Before Buildings
This double messaging, outward and inward at once, with a fierceness that cut through both directions, cleared space for new kinds of emotional logics. It still sounds astounding long after the band has vanished. Though Tompkins went back to the painting that she trained for in Glasgow art school, her voice still pierces and expands, ricochets and sinks in.