Album review: Other Half – Dark Ageism

Thanks (or, perhaps, no thanks) to Steve Coogan, Norwich has been on the receiving end of a lot of jokes for a long time now. But beyond Alan Partridge’s criticism of the pedestrianisation of its city centre – which, for what it’s worth, is a really good idea – there’s actually been an incredibly vibrant, if underground, indie and punk scene in the East Anglian hub for a long time now.

Other Half – the experimental, staunchly DIY post-hardcore trio consisting of bassist/vocalist Sophie ‘Soapy’ Porter, guitarist/vocalist Cal Hudson and drummer Alfie Adams – are very much a part of it. Dark Ageism is their third full-length, following on from 2020’s Big Twenty and 2022’s Soft Action. Its 12 stark, dark songs serve as the final part of what the band consider a trilogy, a self-conscious self-examination of what it means (on this part of it, anyway) to be doing what they’re doing in their 30s.

As such, the songs on Dark Ageism traverse past and present, attempting to both identify the difference and measure the distance between the two when it feels, to them, like they’re doing the same things they always were.

That tension – between rock’n’roll dreams and rock’n’roll reality, between the arrested development of being in a band – is the undercurrent that bristles beneath these tense, uncomfortable songs.

Opener Lifted Fingers is a slowcore lament that takes to task a system that commodifies everything you love, including the music you make and features a powerful spoken word section by Matthew Caws from New York indie legends Nada Surf that rams that point home. Strange Loop and Sucked It Sore are both insistent, unforgiving surges of energy – all angry yelps and angular guitars, disgust and disaffection – while the more mellow strains of Feeling For Yourself hark back to Sophie growing up in Great Yarmouth. Dollar Sign Eyes and A Little Less Than Evil ramp up the tension and energy again through their jittery, urgent musical rampages, while Other Half Vs. The End Of Everything (which features Johnny Foreigner’s Alexei Berrow) brings the record – and, as such, the trilogy – to an end with its self-aware ruminations on band life and the struggles of it.

But despite those struggles, and despite the world of commodification that even the most DIY band can’t entirely escape or avoid – not to mention a mainstream still overrun with Alan Partridge types – the pay-off is that an essential, brilliant and breathtaking album like this can still exist.

Verdict: 4/5

For Fans Of: Shellac, Sonic Youth, Militarie Gun

Dark Ageism is out now via Big Scary Monsters