Johnny Lynch has been operating under the Pictish Trail moniker since 2002, during which time he’s released five previous albums, toured with Belle & Sebastian, Pavement, Mogwai, SeaPower, and KTTunstall, and played every festival going, as well as becoming a firm favourite of 6Music. ‘Life Slime’ is his sixth studio album, three years on from ‘Island Family’.
Whereas many musicians gravitate to London – or other big cities with ‘happening’ music scenes – with a view to optimising their careers and PR opportunities, Lynch retreated to the isle of Eigg, the smallest of the Inner Hebrides, situated off the west coast of Scotland, some time ago. And it’s here that he conjures a curious hybrid of folk, indie, and electronica. When I caught him performing at Long Division festival in Wakefield, in 2022, he was promoting ‘Island Family’ with the wild energy of a man who’s spent a long time – and a pandemic – on an island only five miles long and three miles wide.
‘Life Slime’ represents something of a tonal shift from his previous work, as the accompanying notes outline:
‘Arriving at a time of immense personal tumult and featuring some of his warmest, most generous and most emotionally intelligent songwriting yet, ‘Life Slime’ is in essence “a breakup record”, says Johnny. “It holds a lot of the hardship, guilt, pain and confusion that come with that kind of upheaval. Although all my albums are rooted in my own experience, Life Slime feels like my most personal collection of songs to date.”’
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It’s also a collection of quirky, lo-fi indietronica which is gentle on the ear, with indie infused with psychedelia (‘Battery Pack’ is a truly perfect encapsulations of this), and there’s a lot going on. The first song, ‘Hold It’, starts with the confession ‘I fucked up’, swirled about in a shedload of maxed-up autotune, mixed in with a bedroom shoegaze vibe and a dash of Young Marble Giants. Despite the lyrical content being less than buoyant at times, or otherwise offering generous helpings of dark sarcasm (‘it’s alright, I’m going to die eventually’, he sings on the title track), ‘Life Slime’ is bubbly, poppy, and a lot more fun than one might anticipate.
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