ALBUM REVIEW: Resilience Adds Fire to Good Looks’ ‘Lived Here for a While’
Maeri Ferguson
Posted On June 5, 2024
One of the best albums of 2022 was a low-key debut, Bummer Year, that came from Austin-based quartet Good Looks, but you’d have been lucky to catch them on tour.
Good Looks (photo by Jackie Lee Young)
Shortly after their hometown album release show that spring, the band canceled much of their tour to support their lead guitarist Jake Ames, who suffered severe injuries from being hit by a car. Months of healing followed, leading to a remarkable recovery and, just months later, the recording of their anticipated follow-up, Lived Here for a While. Then, in 2023, their tour van was rear-ended and destroyed. They were lucky to escape its flames without major injuries, but it’s safe to say their will to carry on has been tested again and again. The songs on Lived Here for a While, all rollicking guitars and vocal power, are steeped in the band’s resilience and strong bond, and much like their excellent debut, deliver a sound that’s confident and fully formed.
Where the last record was frequently mellow and contemplative in its exploration of nostalgia and identity, Lived Here for a While is amplified and raging. Relationships familial and romantic, platonic and toxic are probed, sometimes left in the past (as on the bombastic standout “Self-Destructor”) or carried triumphantly into life’s next chapter (the groove-laden “Vaughn”). On album closer “Why Don’t You Believe Me?” with its crystalline guitar, miscommunication plagues an already complicated interaction with a maternal figure. “Desert” wonders what could be somewhere else, with someone else. “I’ve got a lover that would hate to hear this song,” frontman Tyler Jordan sings, somewhere between wistful and resigned.
Soft or loud, Good Looks shows a masterful understanding of crafting hooky choruses that sink their teeth in, leaving marks to keep reminding you of their bite. Jordan’s full-throated voice crashes blissfully into thrashing guitars and driving percussion across these songs, maybe most impactfully right out of the gate on kiss-off album opener “If It’s Gone.” The song is the beating heart of Lived Here for a While, a lesson learned about what’s no longer good enough, and a swift kick in the ass to keep moving and leave the baggage where it lies.
Good Looks’ Lived Here for a While is out June 7 via Keeled Scales.
