RESTOCKED!!!


Funny thing about kicking: it’s one of the first and last things we  
do. In the womb, a fetus kicks to announce an imminent arrival.  
Meanwhile, laid out on a stretcher, the dying man is “still kicking”  
up until his final moment, when the last thing he kicks is the bucket.

All through life we take our kicks: teenage kicks, modern kicks, kicks  
in the gut. These days, with the worldwide rise of fascists,  
demagogues, abusers, and hypocrites, the kick we feel most often comes  
while we’re down.

 From their sudden and deliberate first chord on Love Keeps Kicking,  
beloved British punk collective Martha announce their intent to kick  
back. Across 11 tracks, these daughters and sons of Pity Me, England,  
show that, while our world might be in spiral, there is still plenty  
worth fighting for.

In many ways Love Keeps Kicking is a breakup record, with each song  
inhabiting different parts of the process. “This year blew my world  
apart” sings guitarist/vocalist Daniel Ellis on album opener “Heart is  
Healing.” With lush vocal harmonies (and one of the best riffs in  
Martha’s discography) “Healing” explores the uncomfortable period  
between love’s end, and when the heart is ready to move on.

Elsewhere, the opening chords of “Orange Juice” (arguably the best  
song Martha have written to date) echo the kicking of it’s narrator’s  
heart, as they suddenly realize with fearful clarity that their  
longtime relationship is ending. “I didn’t know it then, but you were  
falling out of love with me / It’s a new development in the plan / a  
painful change in circumstance,” Nathan Stephens-Griffin sings,  
wringing out the imminent meaning in each word. Ending just as it  
begins, “Orange Juice” is Martha at their most heartbreaking, hitting  
a tender, bittersweet, middle ground between Paul Westerberg and the  
Pastels as Stephens-Griffin confesses “I don’t know what to do now.”

But while many songs are openly about romantic breakups, most could  
just as easily about the pain of seeing the world swing dramatically  
towards the far right. As Pitchfork noted in their glowing review of  
2016’s Blisters in the Pit of My Heart, Martha explore the  
“intersections of reality and emotionality.” For a band whose  
identities are political whether or not they want them to be, daily  
life in 2018 is often a kick in the teeth.

On Love Keeps Kicking, this vulnerability becomes one of Martha’s  
greatest strengths. Again and again, the band lovingly gives voice  
(all four voices) to lives lived on the edge: institutionalized  
children (“Mini Was a Preteen Arsonist”), outcasts (“Wrestlemania  
VIII”), lovesick demonologists (“Love Keeps Kicking”), and feminist  
sci-fi writers (“Lucy Shone a Light On You: The Ballad of Lucy Connor  
Part II”). These are the people Martha celebrate, reminding them (and  
us) that love might not be there now, but it’s still kicking.

Maturity in punk is often code for “boring”. Sometimes that’s true,  
but if Love Keeps Kicking illustrates anything, it’s the importance of  
growth in a stunted world—of knowing how to love what you have, and  
how to celebrate the loves you’ve lost. Martha have already made a  
case for themselves as this generation’s Buzzcocks (if not this  
generation’s Clash), and with Love Keeps Kicking fans will likely find  
themselves discovering even more about the band to love. Because even  
if the world’s going to shit, love keeps kicking.

- Mike Huguenor

Tracklist:
1.      Heart Is Healing
2.      Sight For Sore Eyes
3.      Into This
4.      Wrestlemania VIII
5.      Mini Was A Preteen Arsonist
6.      Love Keeps Kicking
7.      Brutalism By The River (Arrhythmia)
8.      Orange Juice
9.      The Void
10.     Lucy Shone A Light On You
11.     The Only Letter That You Kept