The Leisure Society are an English rock band formed initially in Burton upon Trent by Nick Hemming and Christian Hardy. Hemming has a history in indie music and film scoring, and in 2006, he collaborated with Hardy in London. The band, which includes members from various musical collectives, received critical acclaim and comparisons to U.S acts like Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes. They received consecutive Ivor Novello nominations in 2009 and 2010. They’ve released five studio albums between 2009 and 2019, each receiving positive reviews.
Hemming was formerly of early 1990s indie band She Talks to Angels, which included actor Paddy Considine, and film director Shane Meadows. Hemming wrote and performed music for the films A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man’s Shoes. He was also a member of The Telescopes.
Hemming moved to London to work with multi-instrumentalist and producer Christian Hardy the pair have subsequently built a live band drawn from members of Brighton’s Willkommen Collective and further afield, notably Mike Siddell who previously played violin with Hope of the States and The Miserable Rich and currently performs with Lightspeed Champion and Troubles. Other members of the band played with The Miserable Rich and currently play with Sons of Noel and Adrian and more.
Their debut single, “The Last of the Melting Snow”, was honoured with a 2009 Ivor Novello nomination for Best Song Musically & Lyrically.
The Sleeper
In July 2009 the band signed with UK label Full Time Hobby, prompting the re-release of “The Sleeper” with a bonus EP entitled “A Product of the Ego Drain“. In the September Brian Eno cited the band as “The only other thing I’ve been listening to lately with enthusiasm”, calling it “Such a beautiful album”. This prompted a meeting between Hemming, Hardy and Eno at Eno’s London studio.
The third single from “The Sleeper”, “Save It For Someone Who Cares”, was also nominated for the Ivor Novello in the same category as the previous year, making the band one of very few consecutive nominees.
They are doing something right, to my ears at least, and in these early days I take immense pleasure from “The Sleeper” in its rereleased form with added bonus EP “A Product Of The Ego Drain”, which compiles singles, B-sides and other unreleased material. This includes “Pancake Day” which instantly demands the creation of a new tradition in my household of being given an annual airing every Shrove Tuesday. This is in part because of its topical title but also to remind me of the subtle wit and humour that pervades some of the band’s lyrics: “I’m not an evil man, on Pancake Day I lent you my frying pan”.
Into The Murky Water
The band’s second album “Into The Murky Water” was released in May 2011 and received glowing critical praise] and gave the band their first chart position. The first single from the album, “This Phantom Life”, was released with a video starring Green Wing’s Mark Heap.
The Leisure Society’s delightful second record arrives as a wonderful surprise: one leg in and one leg out of the current folk-pop scene but utilising their wide stance to confidently deliver a record bedecked in beautiful, swirling melodies and deftly constructed vignettes. The whole record plays out like a sumptuous stage musical: stocked full of dramatic twists, surges of strings, woodwind cascades and a continual desire to find new and improved ways of bringing a song to a mutually satisfied conclusion.
The Leisure Society have a gift of expertly spreading their creativity over the tracks so that you don’t get too much in one place and too little in another – an ideal spread of musical butter. Therefore, everything sounds precisely where it should be: relaxed and naturally weightless. It would be comparatively easy to ratchet this into overwrought rambling and unnecessary intellectualism but they never even come close. From the overture swoops of the opening title track into the gradually-gathering momentum that pirouettes through ‘Dust on the Dancefloor’, the album sounds perfectly pieced and patched together, held close with an invisible seam. Lead singer and writer Nick Hemming is also enough to recognise the value of understanding when a song has been wrung clean of all possibilities (the joyous ‘You Could Keep Me Talking), but also ambitious enough to know when to throw a curveball at a song to change its form and momentum (the gypsy campfire coda to ‘I Shall Forever Remain An Amateur’). The continual intelligence in the songs doesn’t demand the same cerebral connection from the listener, but it certainly does reward it. This is very clever songwriting; made to sound absurdly simple.
In that, and many other senses, “Into The Murky Water” sounds as close to any of The Beatles’ greatest records as anything I’ve heard in the last five years or so. But in terms of the ability to blend disparate elements of pop music together without fear or pretension; writing songs with care for them being pieces of genuine art craft rather than as an exercise or entrepreneurial venture. The result is a truly gorgeous collection of sounds, flourishes and fresh, vibrant ideas and melodies crafted out of wicker and flowers (the subtle orchestration behind the tracks in particular is absolutely beautiful). Lyrically, it doesn’t cover any new ground or contain any shattering proclamations or poetry, but when married to melodies as exquisite as those on display here, you can easily forgive the words settling into a minor degree of complacency.
“Into The Murky Water” won’t change the world. It won’t answer the questions you have about life, the universe and the upcoming zombie apocalypse spawned by the Fukushima Reactor Leak (you heard it here first). It doesn’t need to. What it will do is fill your ears, mind and spirit with a little shaft of sunlight that causes you to delight in the moment and experience. Music doesn’t always need to say or do anything radical but it does need to be committed, genuine, honest and lovingly cultivated. And because the album is drawn from each of those elements, it succeeds admirably: providing a door into a world of spinning umbrellas, bright colours and richly embroided music tapestries. As light, pretty and as aurally satisfying a record as you will hear this year; it proves that sometimes, the good guys really do win. Fuck looking cool, scowling and hiding your face in that dark overcoat; let’s all sing together, shall we? After all, summer’s coming. And lord knows, we could certainly all do with a little smile upon our lips right now…
In many of their songs, the Leisure Society blend sadness with hope, often in two distinct musical sections, the sun coming after the rain, and this is no exception – “We’ll all get somewhere somehow” is the promise. Album closer “Just Like The Knife” provides similar sensation, shifting from the industrial grey of a British seaside fairground in winter to a warm, evening sunlit Hawaiian beach across the space of six minutes.
Alone Aboard the Ark
Onwards, then, to the band’s third studio album “Alone Aboard the Ark” was released, once again receiving a strong critical reaction. “One Man And His Fug” is exactly the sort of song that is all cheery, bouncy chords laced with self-reflection and perverse revelling in sometimes not being very well in the head. I, too, have sometimes missed “the fug of apathy and the grey days it surrounded”; similarly, I have known that “if I say what you want to hear, the face in the mirror won’t look right”. It’s great to have a catchy song to sing these emotions along to.
‘Alone Aboard The Ark’ sees them further reaffirming their quaint old-time charms with a release that looks back, while retaining the air of a band who are happily prepared to continue on their own merry way. It was recorded at Ray Davies’ legendary Konk Studios, and a measure of The Kinks’ 60s charm seems to have rubbed off.
As has become customary for The Leisure Society, Hemming’s lyrics and gift for storytelling once again stand out, his wonderful couplets and warm voice helping to lift many of the weaker moments here above torpor. He is quite the wordsmith, the best evidence of this found in ‘Tearing The Arches Down”s description of a mysterious elusive character, ‘the boy with the bloodshot eyes, a legend in your lunchtime.’ A glimpse at the tracklisting with song titles like ‘One Man And His Fug’, shows his way with a memorable line.
The string-filled climax of ‘All I Have Seen’ veers perilously close to the theatrical. Far better is the graceful, quite lovely waltz of penultimate track ‘We Go Together’, six minutes of sashaying beauty fully emphasising everything heart warming and good about The Leisure Society at their best.
The Fine Art of Hanging On
The band’s fourth studio album “The Fine Art of Hanging On” was released, receiving the strongest critical reaction since their debut. Released a couple of years later, It is a truly wonderful collection of songs. On the follow-up to their 2013 LP, “Alone Aboard the Ark”, the Leisure Society contemplate survival and perseverance with a loosely themed collection called “The Fine Art of Hanging On“. During the writing and recording of the album, a close friend of frontman Nick Hemming’s was waging a losing battle with cancer, and all through the band’s creative process, these recurring ideas of hanging on and grasping kept reappearing in Hemming’s lyrics, resulting in what he has referred to as an “accidental concept album.” Hemming no stranger to melancholic themes, but the overall sunny nature of the Leisure Society’s previous output feels especially counterbalanced here by the weight of desperation and difficulty.
“You’ll Never Know When It Breaks” which is as beautiful a song of love as you could hope to hear. Not fairytale, Hollywood love, but the love that accepts destiny with all its flaws and contradictions – “we decided to be artless and happy” being the ultimate conclusion following the realisation that “It’s no use handing out platitudes, our luck is so uneven you’ll never know when it breaks.”
Musically, the band is as affable as ever, layering these well-crafted songs with the clever Baroque pop arrangements and unique embellishments they’ve become known for. Still, for as tidily orchestrated as they are, songs like “Tall Black Cabins,” which tells the story of a hopeless fishing crew, and the lonely waltz “All Is Now” are powerful and soulful, with a wistful grandeur that supports their subjects. The rhythmic, hooky “Outside In” is another standout with a maudlin streak running through its pop core. “Nothing Like This” is a breezy indie pop confection with a slight Latin flair, and “I’m a Setting Sun” rocks gently with a hopeful and harmonic richness. Still, there is already an overwhelming politeness to most of the Leisure Society’s songs and arrangements, and the tight, almost constricting production style here ensures that any sharp edge or rogue tone has been dealt with.
It makes sense then to conclude with what – for me at least – is the finest moment in the band’s canon: Wide Eyes At Villains. Part one, the lyrical part, begins with us listening to the radio’s gentle music, a direct contrast to the violence of the scene outside, constant promises of change that never materialise. It is a fair reflection on the state of the world today. And then … then … part two. This is the utopia, the promised land. There are no words, just a glorious, building instrumental crescendo with layers of brass, strings and opera.
Arrivals & Departures
Their fifth studio album released January 2019, by the band “Arrivals & Departures” on their own label, Ego Drain Records. A decade into their recording career, England’s amiable chamber pop specialists, the Leisure Society, return with their first double album, a deeply personal self-exploration from frontman Nick Hemming, whose breakup with bandmate Helen Whitaker lies at its thematic core. There has always been an earnest sensitivity to Hemming’s songwriting which the group then trims in garlands of wistful strings, horns, and woodwinds so that even at their most melancholic, there remains a feeling that hope does indeed spring eternal. Such is the case on “Arrivals & Departures”, where over two discs, the band serves up themes of regret and dramatic life changes atop puffed clouds of bittersweet melody and orchestral grandeur with occasional stabs of angry lightning. As with all of the Leisure Society’s output, there is a good deal of thought put into these tightly crafted songs and while tonally, their inter-band drama may sound more like a storm in a teacup, the subtlety of Hemming’s pain lies in the many layers contained within. Take the title cut, for example, where a sad but stately waltz is briefly interrupted by a sudden fuzz-laden bridge whose simmering anguish boils over in tiny discordant notes and anxious effects without straying from its major-key refrain.
While the more obvious references to the transient nature of relationships explain themselves outright, it’s the grace notes and musical subtexts that make “Arrivals & Departures” an interesting listen. The eerie, glistening backdrop of the remorseful “I’ll Pay for It Now” and the distant, distorted hums threading in and out of tracks like “Let Me Bring You Down” and “Leave Me to Sleep” accent the more forthright melodies in enchanting ways. At his core, Hemming is a classic popsmith with an innately optimistic compass, and throughout these 16 tracks, he still manages to transmute his troubles into several rousing, even exultant crescendos and hooks that celebrate the journey more than the arrivals and departures.
Brave Are The Waves
The Leisure Society are back with a new song recorded in collaboration with pioneering musician, producer and artist, Brian Eno. ‘Brave Are The Waves’ is the first feature track from a forthcoming 2023 EP. It was recorded as a one-take live performance at The Kink’s famous ‘Konk’ studios, then sent to regular collaborator and champion of the band, Brian Eno, who created new textures and sounds across the song.
The band first met Eno in 2009 when he emerged as a fan of their debut album, “The Sleeper”. That album went on to be a Rough Trade Album of the Year and secured the band their first record deal, along with those two Ivor Novello nominations. Eno also played on the band’s song ‘I’ll Pay For It Now’, from their last 2019 double album “Arrivals & Departures”.
Emerging from lockdown with a big new collection of songs, The Leisure Society will be doing a small tour in UK later this year,before embarking on a major album tour in 2024.
‘The World From a Window’ is a brand new Leisure Society song, written and recorded in isolation. Not all the band currently have access to a studio, but Bas and Jon mailed over rhythm tracks and Helen offered a last-minute flute part – just as Nick was mixing the final recording (with remote guidance from Christian). Chris Riddell kindly created the beautiful artwork with only a few hours notice. The song is a reflection on the challenges of isolating alone and the comfort that can be found in creativity, nature and the warmth of the sun.
Released May 1st, 2020
The Albums So Far,
- The Sleeper (2009)
- A product of the Ego Drain (2009)
- Into The Murky Water (2011)
- Alone Aboard the Ark (2013)
- The Fine Art of Hanging On (2015)
- Arrivals & Departures (2019)
The Fat Angel Sings 