Some records hit one with an instant impression of timeless brilliance, and Low Life’s Dogging is one of those records, what the wise call “an instant classic”. From Squats To Lots: The Agony And The XTC Of Low Life is more like their second album Downer Edn (read Edition), a little more withdrawn, a little more textured. Complex. Rich. Which is to say: one’s going to need some time with it. Iggy Pop’s Bowie-produced studio rock masterpieces The Idiot and Lust For Life are important reference points to this third album. Here comes success! Bowie later referred to this period of his life as profoundly nihilistic. But Iggy looked at it as the period of his life that saved him from an early grave. This confrontation is Low life lore.

Sip it, and sense the recurring brilliance of Mitch Tolman’s lyrics, exploring the usual territory of gutter life, lad life, punk life, low life. The dirge. Disgust and shame in white Australia. Council housing, bills piled to the neck, substance abuse and rehabilitation, the fallen lads and lasses who stood too close to the flame, loss and loneliness, from squats to lots. Un-Australian gutter symphony.

Think, like, if Poison Idea were given the kind of studio time and budget as Happy Mondays. One wouldn’t play this to a teenager. It’s not for children. This is a mature flavor, one for the adults who have had to contend with failure and hardship, medical bills and disappointed family members, betrayed lovers and worrisome growths, police brutality and tooth decay, humiliating bowels and collapsed septums, detoxing and drying out, for those who have seen themselves as corrupted and putrid and unloveable, for those who endure all of this and aren’t willing to lie down and cop it sweet: Low Life are still here and they ain’t going nowhere.


Our take: From Squats to Lots is the 3rd album from this group from Sydney, Australia. Their previous record, Downer Edn, really clicked with me back in 2019. I approached that record with no expectations, and while it would have been easy to dismiss it as yet another good contemporary post-punk record from Australia, I returned to Downer Edn repeatedly, entranced by something I couldn’t put my finger on. Oddly enough, even though I was looking forward to From Squats to Lots, my experience with it has been similar. The first listen or two had me thinking it sounded more or less like Downer Edn, but again I find myself reaching for this record all the time. I guess Low Life is a grower, not a shower? Part of that might be that most of the songs on From Squats to Lots rumble along at a similar tempo, rarely deploying dynamic shifts in volume, tone, or texture. (An exception is the hardcore-ish “Cza,” which will help you believe Low Life shares a member with Oily Boys.) While it might strike you as a little same-y sounding on the first listen, From Squats to Lots is full of nooks and crannies hiding countless hooks. The sound reminds me of the Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead or Echo & the Bunnymen’s Porcupine. Like those records, From Squats to Lots has a subtle but strong rhythm section that contrasts with a feather-light touch on the higher frequencies. Again, my brain reaches for comparisons to the most 60s-influenced UK post-punk bands who took the layered, melodic psych of Sgt Pepper’s, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, and S.F. Sorrow and grafted it onto Joy Division’s brooding aesthetic. And as with their countrymen in Total Control, while it’s easy to reach into the past for points of reference, Low Life sounds fresh, like music made for today. And while I’m here, note that we also just got in a repress of Low Life’s hard to find first album, 2014’s Dogging, so look forward to my thoughts on that in a future newsletter.