A couple of weeks ago, Rob from Luxembourg announced that the band had decided to go their separate ways. They had finally thrown in the towel after seven years hard slog on the indie circuit. In a final gesture of resignation/celebration, the band posted the demos of their aborted second album onto last.fm, allowing their loyal fans one last chance to hear new Luxembourg songs.
I wasn’t expecting much of The Last Holiday Before the Divorce, despite its great title. One of the formative moments in my life was observing, at the age of 17, lots of old people (though they were probably only the age I am now) in the Princess Charlotte clinging, despite the burns, to the embers of their youth. I wanted — and still want — to embrace the new, rather than wistfully evoke the sentimentalised pleasures of my youth.
When I first saw Luxembourg in 2003 they were fantastic, they renewed my faith in music, which lacked the catchy songs with sublime lyrics. The lyrics remained great (if somewhat solipsistic) but the music became more discordant and confused. You always got the sense with Luxembourg that they were throwing everything into the mix, which some might argue was evidence of a deeper malaise: that of desperation. Now, no one denies that you have to put in some effort in, but at least pretend to be a little nonchalent! We like our bands to be cool, not to try so hard they become resentful.
As such, it was a surpise to find that The Last Holiday Before the Divorce is really quite good. It is mature, stripped of all excesses, and unbearably poignant. Art is No Defence, despite being the roughest song on the album, is one of the best — experimental and atmospheric. How I Love You is a sharp dose of weimar indie; Steady Pressure is a light, airy piano ballad with a sublime pathos-laden chorus; and Crowd Scene a throbbing, insistent pop song with an addictive melody.
The two ’singles’ — that is, the only songs to be properly recorded — Kick Me and Not Quite Right — get better and better with each listen. It’s melancholic, at times like this, to wonder what might have been if only they had been contemporaneous with the Longpigs and Mansun rather than Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines. The late-period Britpop they purveyed would have been signed and embraced, not ignored and scorned. Wrong place, wrong time: what a waste.
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