Third Time at the Beach by LICE

As we enter adulthood, arrogant adolescent beliefs shatter, splintering upon impact with the opaque complexity of the real world. British experimental rockers LICE investigate this inevitable impact on their new album Third Time at the Beach, a Hegelian dialectic in three parts that shows the cold, confusing world of nuance that unfolds before us as we mature. As we first emerge into the world, misplaced confidence in simple dogma blocks out any deep understanding, symbolized in the music with orderly songwriting that develops linearly into groovy, techno-infused post punk climaxes. Finding our paradigms constantly challenged by the world’s complexity, we encounter doubt even in our most fundamental assumptions, an upheaval represented sonically by spacier composition with jazz influences, all centered around dissonant meanderings reminiscent of krautrock. Finally, we emerge into a nuanced worldview that allows for broken rules and complex causation, never fully able to return to our old confidence but still regaining our footing as the music concludes with intricate riffs that align beautifully into coherent, logical statements about a world instantly recognizable as realistic yet infinitely strange.