Martha - Love Keeps Kicking (April 5, 2019) Album

Tracklist:
1. Heart Is Healing
2. Sight For Sore Eyes
3. Into This
4. Wrestlemania VIII
5. Mini Was A Preteen Arsonist
6. Love Keeps Kicking
7. Brutalism By The River (Arrhythmia)
8. Orange Juice
9. The Void
10. Lucy Shone A Light On You
11. The Only Letter That You Kept

Out via Dirtnap Records and Big Scary Monsters

 

"Funny thing about kicking: it’s one of the first and last things we
do. In the womb, a fetus kicks to announce an imminent arrival.
Meanwhile, laid out on a stretcher, the dying man is “still kicking”
up until his final moment, when the last thing he kicks is the bucket.

All through life we take our kicks: teenage kicks, modern kicks, kicks
in the gut. These days, with the worldwide rise of fascists,
demagogues, abusers, and hypocrites, the kick we feel most often comes
while we’re down.

From their sudden and deliberate first chord on Love Keeps Kicking,
beloved British punk collective Martha announce their intent to kick
back. Across 11 tracks, these daughters and sons of Pity Me, England,
show that, while our world might be in spiral, there is still plenty
worth fighting for.

In many ways Love Keeps Kicking is a breakup record, with each song
inhabiting different parts of the process. “This year blew my world
apart” sings guitarist/vocalist Daniel Ellis on album opener “Heart is
Healing.” With lush vocal harmonies (and one of the best riffs in
Martha’s discography) “Healing” explores the uncomfortable period
between love’s end, and when the heart is ready to move on.

Elsewhere, the opening chords of “Orange Juice” (arguably the best
song Martha have written to date) echo the kicking of it’s narrator’s
heart, as they suddenly realize with fearful clarity that their
longtime relationship is ending. “I didn’t know it then, but you were
falling out of love with me / It’s a new development in the plan / a
painful change in circumstance,” Nathan Stephens-Griffin sings,
wringing out the imminent meaning in each word. Ending just as it
begins, “Orange Juice” is Martha at their most heartbreaking, hitting
a tender, bittersweet, middle ground between Paul Westerberg and the
Pastels as Stephens-Griffin confesses “I don’t know what to do now.”

But while many songs are openly about romantic breakups, most could
just as easily about the pain of seeing the world swing dramatically
towards the far right. As Pitchfork noted in their glowing review of
2016’s Blisters in the Pit of My Heart, Martha explore the
“intersections of reality and emotionality.” For a band whose
identities are political whether or not they want them to be, daily
life in 2018 is often a kick in the teeth.

On Love Keeps Kicking, this vulnerability becomes one of Martha’s
greatest strengths. Again and again, the band lovingly gives voice
(all four voices) to lives lived on the edge: institutionalized
children (“Mini Was a Preteen Arsonist”), outcasts (“Wrestlemania
VIII”), lovesick demonologists (“Love Keeps Kicking”), and feminist
sci-fi writers (“Lucy Shone a Light On You: The Ballad of Lucy Connor
Part II”). These are the people Martha celebrate, reminding them (and
us) that love might not be there now, but it’s still kicking.

Maturity in punk is often code for “boring”. Sometimes that’s true,
but if Love Keeps Kicking illustrates anything, it’s the importance of
growth in a stunted world—of knowing how to love what you have, and
how to celebrate the loves you’ve lost. Martha have already made a
case for themselves as this generation’s Buzzcocks (if not this
generation’s Clash), and with Love Keeps Kicking fans will likely find
themselves discovering even more about the band to love. Because even
if the world’s going to shit, love keeps kicking."

- Mike Huguenor

very stoked for this

 

so psyched

my friend sara plays the bride in the "love keeps kicking" video!!!!

 

haha that’s amazing! their videos keep getting better and better

 

Very excited, I still play the hell out of Blisters

 

Glad this lot were able to get back on their feet after the guy who produced their first two albums was outed as a sexual predator.

 

jesus i had no idea about that. glad to hear they sorted that out

 

yeah it was Matthew Johnson, also vocalist for Hookworms. I assume he hasn't had a production job since, the prick.

 

Here for it

 

not hitting me like the other two but a solid track. sounds like it's going to be a more subdued record

 

this might be my favorite single so far. hoping they come stateside again soon

 

out there

 

yeah, looks like people who preordered it from BSM got it yesterday. i did it from Dirt Nap and haven't gotten a download yet.

 

really into this after the first listen. aside from the singles, sight for sore eyes (especially the the last minute of it), mini was a preteen arsonist, brutalism by the river, and lucy shone a light on you were the immediate favorites. enjoyed the call back to the ballad of lucy connor

 

It's a solid album, I wish it maybe had one or two more slower songs to mix it up a bit more, and because they're so good at those, but that's a very modest complaint. Still need to dive into the lyrics too.

 

Thought this was really good on first listen

 

This is great

 

happy release day, y’all

 

Weird that this isn't showing for me on Apple Music (just the pre-release tracks) but the whole thing is on Spotify

 

Martha - Love Keeps Kicking

 

This rules

 

love it so much

god bless Martha for dropping a new album with a wrestling song on Mania weekend