Life Without Buildings: An Interview with Sue Tompkins and Robert Johnston. It’s a cold Thursday night, Dawson’s has just finished and I’m about to tuck into some fine tuna mornae when the phone rings.  Bastards, I think, no-one’s gonna interrupt my dinner.  The message bank takes the call and I’m munching down; the phone rings again.  “Insistent mungrels,” growls my flatmate, and this time I pick it up, only to hear the wonderful voice of Telstra say, “We’re putting you through to the UK now Sir.”  Fuck me - it’s the interview with Glaswegian rockers Life Without Buildings, and I haven’t prepared any questions because I wasn’t sure our talk was even going to take place.  Still, if Kinky Friedman can play country music, hell I can do an impromptu impression of a journo who has got their shit together. “Hello?” - a woman’s voice, with a seductive English accent. “Hi, it’s Geoff from Sydney. Who am I speaking to?” “Sue,” the voice replies, and it dawns on me that the questioning in her voice relates to the fact that she’s the only woman in the band, Sue Tompkins, lyricist extraordinaire, who is probably now thinking that she’s speaking to the dumbest music critic ever to attempt an interview on the fly.  Thankfully Sue’s nowhere near as harsh as that, and things are smoothed over fairly quickly, with guitarist Robert Johnston soon joining our conversation and filling in the blanks for my feeble, insomniac-addled mind. “We’ve just come back from Athens,” Robert responds when  I ask what the group has been up to. “It was absolutely mad over there.  The crowds were fantastic, everyone was singing along and they all seemed to know the words,” Sue adds, the enthusiasm shining through.  “Especially the song New Town, they just went mad.” Synapse connects to synapse, and I realise that New Town, off their debut album Any Other City, is the song where (I think) Sue sings repeatedly, each time with more force, “I’m  looking in your arse, I’m looking in your arse.”  I’ve spent hours searching the web, trying to confirm that these are the actual lyrics but to no avail and every time I hear the song I become more and more convinced that what we have is one of the great lyrics of contemporary music.  Unfortunately, I’m way off the mark. “It’s eyes,” Sue says, careful to draw out the word into two syllables, making sure that I know we’re thinking of the organs used for vision rather than the posterior used for, well, other things.  “I was really careful in the studio about that...I mean...no, it’s so not arse.  I couldn’t sing that night after night.”  After much laughter, and my observation that perhaps the Greek audience were reacting wildly to a somewhat mixed-up message, we talk some more about the band’s fan-base. “One of the great things about the internet,” replies Robert, “is that we’re able to connect with so many people.  We have a yahoo group set up from our website, with almost 200 members now, and it’s fantastic being able to communicate directly with them.  I mean, we’re not just musicians, we’re fans of music too, and so our site will hopefully become a place where we can expose more of the Glasgow scene that we feel part of.” Life Without Buildings, named after an obscure Japan b-side, have only been together since mid-1999 yet their sound has been well-polished by their constant touring with the likes of Lee Renaldo, Wire and Australian band Gerling.  After releasing three singles last year, the band were drawing plaudits from critics and punters in the UK, many heralding them as the logical heirs to groups as diverse as Television, The Smiths and The Slits.  With such heavy critical praise hanging over them, I mentioned to Sue and Robert that, although the rhythm section had a distinct late-70s NYC feel to it, the band sounded a lot more modern and contemporary. “There’s no doubt that we were influenced by that style of music,” Robert says, though I detect he’s getting a bit tired of the continual references to Tom Verlaine’s old group. “But we’re just as influenced by what’s going on now in the post-hardcore movement, like the American band Karate.” Sue’s quick to follow up, telling me, “We don’t want to be a retro band, stuck in some dated sound or style.  That’s been done.  What we want is to be doing something new, and fresh, that, although maybe it references the past, sounds contemporary and challenges listeners.” One of the common complaints of many bands who have recorded their first album after playing for several years is that by the time the album is released, the artists have grown bored with performing the same songs, so I was interested to hear how these guys avoid that dilemma. “Every night on stage things are a little different,” says Sue.  “Our music live is really about those subtle interactions between the instruments.  Any Other City was recorded mostly live, so it gives a good impression of what we’re like, but if anything we’re quicker, and I’m very mobile, running around.  We don’t linger on things, even if we do make a stuff-up, and I think what keeps us fresh is that we never know, from night to night, what the music will be like, how the dynamics will work.  So we’re all still excited and interested in what we do on stage.” Robert notes, “Our setlist is also expanding, something you can do on tour is write new songs, test them out.  Our newest song is Love Trinity; it’s a more-relaxed tune I suppose, but we’re always evolving.” Fellow fans of Life Without Buildings will have noticed on the website’s message board a number of greetings from Aussie listeners, eager to know when we might see them visiting our fair yet far-away shores.  I mentioned this to them, as part of a multi-pronged question concerning the group’s future this year and the possibility of a new record. “Well we’re really hoping to get down there by the end of the year.  Later on this month we start a UK tour, with another Glasgow band, Aerogramme.  After that, we’re looking at going into the studio around September, and when we’re done there, well, fingers crossed.” Thanking them both for what has been, all things considering, a very pleasant and engaging conversation, I return back to my dinner at hand, contemplating how weird it was to be speaking to someone whose music has been playing repeatedly on my stereo over the last few weeks.  Any Other City, released locally on Trifekta, is easily one of this year’s best albums.  Sue’s engaging and challenging lyrics and vocal delivery slide effortlessly over Johnston. Will Bradley and Chris Evans’ throbbing music and they, in conjunction with local outfit YouthGroup, have helped revive my faith in the future of guitar-driven, life-changing music.  If you turn up to one of Life Without Buildings’ gigs later this year and see a crazed man, with manic, bloodshot eyes,screaming out, “It’s arse, not eyes” during New Town, that’ll be me giving thanks to the power of rock and roll.