Depending on how ‘online’ you are, the phrase Live, Laugh, Love could either be a sign in your aunt’s kitchen or an ironic slogan. For alt-rock Seattle-based four piece, Chastity Belt, the love-of-huns type saying is a mixture of the two, and they’ve adopted it as the title of their forthcoming album. Out this Friday via Suicide Squeeze Records, the band are returning with a project that’s altogether playful, honest, and hopeful.
Making a comeback after a five-year hiatus, ‘Live Laugh Love’ is also the group’s fifth studio album and a compilation of 11 indie-shoegaze-tinged songs. Recorded over just three sessions between 2020 to now, the album documents a timeline of the euphoric highs and turbulent lows of the band’s journey since lockdown.
It’s with the help of engineer Samur Khouja (who worked their last album), and Heba Kadry (Bjork, Slowdive), who mastered this one, that this project is able to effortlessly weave a melancholic, shoegaze sound that’s equally inspiring as it is sombre.
‘Live Laugh Love’ stands on its own two feet as a significant project championing 13 years of the band being together. Showcasing just how much they’ve grown into their own over the years, for the first time in their careers, this album sees each band member contribute towards the writing process.
Talking about this, guitarist/vocalist, Julia Shapiro, says, “We’ve been playing music with each other for over a decade,” says Shapiro, “so it really does feel like we’re all fluent in the same language, and a lot of it just happens naturally.”
Having so far shared tracks ‘Hollow’, ‘I-90 Bridge’, and most recently ‘Chemtrails’, throughout the last few weeks the group has slowly peeled away the magic behind this project with a selection of their most ethereal releases. Consistency is clearly a key theme on the album, as you make your way through, each song fluidly flows into the next. That being said, sonically, there’s little distinction between them.
If this is the album that gets you into the Chastity Belt hype, know that they’re a band who have established their sound through and through. Whilst there’s little variety across the soundscape of this project, each track tells its own unique story through emotionally-penned lyrics, sombre harmonies and buoyant chorus lines.
On ‘Live Laugh Love’ Chastity Belt return with a wholesome project that both embodies the band’s sibling-like bond, and their effortless ability to keep their legacy going.