Big life

The real-life equivalent to a band dropping a double album is someone taking a road trip with a new flame or friend – it’s a chance to show all the qualities worth sharing. However, flaws can reveal themselves with each track (or stay in a cramped hotel room). Indie rock band The Rifles’ Big Life never stray far from this parallel, but its track-by-track showcase of what a guitar can do in a sequence of a pop progression manages to upstage those flaws over the course of 18 tracks. Barring some keyboard-dominated numbers during the album’s second half, the English quintet don’t miss a chance to deploy string scratches under lyrics, riffs between words and feedback, like on single ‘Wall Around Your Heart.’ On ‘Turtle Dove’ lead singer Joel Stoker croons “ain’t no need to hide”, and I half expected him to finish the phrase with “this infectious six-string display.” He doesn’t — but listeners still know where the best moments are less than a quarter of the way through the album. It’s a master-class display of guitar’s place in pop. A few tracks, including ‘Turtle Dove’, embody common critiques of the double album, however, mirroring arrangements before them, lacking the lyrics expected in a collection of a band’s best. But Stoker has said the band decided just to throw all Big Life’s music on in order to appease a loyal, enthusiastic fan base 12 years in the making, and why not?