Ist Ist’s The Art Of Lying is a clear, coherent and ordered example of consistency – the considerable class and all-round quality are established early and maintained throughout. Is that consistency sustained partly because of a sameness to the material? Well, yes – but this is a strong, solid and very listenable album that helps the Manchester boys re-establish and subtly refine their identity following last year’s acclaimed Architecture. There is still a retro vibe but eyes appear to be firmly set on the horizon with much promise in the future.
It’s post-Punk with synths plus stark Industrial drama, but I hesitate to describe the modus operandi as “in the Manchester tradition” – the band have already often been compared to Joy Division and their successors, and that whole Manchester focus tends to build expectations that can be distracting. Suffice to say opening song Listening Through The Walls is also reminiscent of Ultravox (John Foxx was from Chorley, near Manchester), with later moments seeming to recall Editors (titles like Watching You Watching Me and It Stops When It Starts would fit that Birmingham collective) plus echoes of Merseyside’s very own Bunnymen and OMD, Manhattan’s Interpol and even the elegant, ingenious arrangements of The National (Brooklyn via Cincinnati, Ohio).
A reviewer once asked: “Do The National do a lot with a little, or a little with a lot?” and the US outfit’s Matt Berninger once said: “Art is like, what do you think about when you think? About the things you desire, things you’re worried about losing. It’s about complicated mental questions.” Which is not to equate Ist Ist too closely to The National, just to say the music somehow reminded me of those things (veteran sound engineer Greg Calbi, who mastered The Art Of Lying, has done National service. Not to mention his work for Lou Reed, Dylan, Bowie, Tame Impala, Interpol, etc etc).
The created-during-lockdowns The Art Of Lying is almost something of a concept album (the title “makes reference to the post-truth world we live in”, it has been said, and there is a certain anti-capitalist, anti-establishment grit to a lot of it) but if the overall “message” lacks focus what really resonates and may well stay with you are a series of simple but effective lyrical phrases delivered in Adam Houghton’s evocative baritone – “Forgive Me …” on Listening Through The Walls; “Do you love me, do you love me any more?” on Fat Cats Drown In Milk; “I needed you, I still needed you …” on Middle Distance. By this point, Joel Kay’s drums are a prominent feature and bass hook junkies will be more than happy (Andy Keating, take a bow).
Other highlights include Extreme Greed (super snare sound and another simply memorable chorus) and Heads On Spikes, which opens moodily and has a cautionary tale to tell (“You are the reason I want/ to be/ alone …”). Closing song Don’t Go Gentle keeps the Ist Ist formula alive and clicking to the last but also offers up some interesting variations, opening with fairytale keyboards before building expertly and effectively via some Dylan Thomas raging to a dreamy fade out.
The sprit and souls of some of these songs are already occupying large, dark rooms, waiting to become timely, indelible live favourites.
The Art Of Lying by Ist Ist is out now, on Kind Violence Records.