Living Body: 'There’s a huge gulf between what is valuable to society and what is valuable under capitalism'

“I think (DIY scenes) must exist everywhere, I feel like that’s the thing you have to tap into if you’re doing it on this level,” he says.

In contrast to the low turnout at a recent gig in Birmingham, shows in London and Brighton were well attended. “People like Joe Coates (promoter at the Brudenell Social Club and The Crescent in York) or how Chunk in Sheffield used to be, people would go there because they knew who was putting it on, they knew that they always did good shows, they had a reputation,” Smith reflects.

“But when you end up with more like an independent promotions company who doesn’t have a scene around what they’re doing, people just come for the music or for the specific act if they’ve heard of them, that can make things harder for a band trying to do everything themselves because if you play in a place like Birmingham, where you’ve never played before, how are people going to know about it if you don’t have people on the ground talking about it.”

To coincide with the tour, Living Body have released their second single of the year, No Debt. Like its predecessor Consumer, the song is one of several that Smith, who grew up in America’s Mid-West, has written “about money or income inequality”. It was, he says, inspired by reading the work of the late American anthropologist and left-wing activist David Graeber, a leading light of the Occupy movement and campaigner for the abolition of student debt.

“In the US it’s similar to this country, tuition gets more and more expensive, and I feel like the cracks are starting to show. People of my generation were like, ‘You have to go to college because otherwise you won’t get a good job and then you will be broke forever’. Then you go and get a degree and you’re actually still broke forever because you’re paying back your student loan.

“During the pandemic in the States they paused the student debt repayments for quite a long time and the Debt Collective, which is a grassroots organisation in the US pushing for student debt abolition completely, (began to grow). Often people have a few thousand pounds of student debt but because they don’t make enough money the interest ends up getting huge. The pandemic paused that and it made a lot of people think why are we continuing to do this.

“Also around what Rishi Sunak was saying during the pandemic about ‘musicians, you’re worthless, re-train and find another job’. I think there’s a huge gulf between what is valuable to society and what is valuable under capitalism. They’re not the same. One thing can enrich our lives but not make value for shareholders, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable – I guess No Debt was inspired by all of that.”

Living Body play at Wharf Chambers, Leeds with Real Terms and Jooloosooboo on November 25. https://livingbodylife.com/