If I were to name my top ten records of this decade, the battle for the top slot wouldn’t even be close: Any Other City by Life Without Buildings has that position locked down by a long shot. Chances are you’re either in close to total agreement with me or are sitting there thinking I’m talking about a Talking Heads cover band.

More on one of the greatest bands ever, plus a couple of MP3s, after the jump…

Here's the thing: Life Without Buildings only managed to churn out a measly fourteen songs before calling it quits. That's an album, a few B-sides, and an unreleased live track that appeared on last year's posthumous Live at the Annandale Hotel for those of you taking notes. Yet in that short timespan (about three years as a band total), they managed to shatter what the words "post" and "punk" mean when they're thrown around together.

In 2001, when Any Other City finally saw a stateside release, the musical landscape was quite different: the bubbling post-punk scene was being spearheaded by jerky Gang of Four enthusiasts determined to get indie kids dancing again. Life Without Buildings managed to take on the other, subtler, more literate side of the genre (think Young Marble Giants meets a non-abrasive Fall), proving music can transcend itself and be art without losing sense of its pop styling, as so often happens with so-called "art-rock" bands. The reason they were able to succeed? Singer Sue Tompkins.

Tompkins is one of the most insanely talented writers/performers you're likely to come across. Delivering her lines in what can only be considered "talk-sung", she darts around the English language like she owns the damn thing, with vocal hiccups, repetition, and non sequiturs being her weapons of choice. She can turn a line like "Days like television, days like television, do do doot do do days like television" into one of the most endearing, and somehow profound, things around.

Unfortunately, Any Other City is long out of print, and the cheapest I can find it is for $45 on Amazon.
If you have that kind of money laying around, I cannot recommend purchasing it enough. If not, their live album can be ordered through Absolutely Kosher, and while it's not as good as the studio recording, it's damn near close. Tompkins never misses a single vocal hiccup, and, above all else, the band sounds excited to be able to just play music.

I could nerd out on this band more than is probably healthy. They truly were one of the greats, and if the below MP3s don't turn you into a convert, I might double check and make sure you're still breathing.

MP3:

PS Exclusive

The Leanover