Mortality through Indie-Rock: Death and Love Pt 2 – Circa Waves Review

Liverpool-based four-piece Circa Waves have released the second part to their January release Death and Love (2025). Adding an additional 9 songs to Part 1, the band have crafted a sprawling double album that both ruminates on a fear of death and acts as a celebration of life. The album comes as a response to frontman Kieran Shuddall’s medical issues. He was told the main artery in his heart was blocked, and he needed an emergency surgery to save his life. While this is often a survivable procedure, Shuddall’s brush with mortality obviously had a profound effect on him: “You can meander through life and think you’re invincible and that sickness is for other people. You think that young people getting ill is just something you see in the papers, then all of a sudden you’re it. You never think it’ll happen to you.”. This resulted in an outpouring of songs reflecting on his own mortality, in what Shuddall described as a “release of creativity”. Shuddall had written so many songs, they wouldn’t have all fit on Part 1.

That isn’t to say Part 2 feels tacked on to Part 1, it doesn’t feel like a deluxe album with unreleased tracks. There is a clear and intentional divide where the first part ends and the second begins. Shuddall himself speaks of the second part acting as a much more optimistic contrast to the brooding Part 1: “It almost feels like if the first record was before the operation and death and fear of dying, then one is coming through the other side. It’s about love, life, survival, and euphoria.”. The second part begins after the first part’s slow and romantic piano rolls from ‘Bad Guys Always Win’, jumping straight into the second part’s opening song, ‘Lost in the Fire’. A thundering electric guitar riff and Shuddall’s vocals introduce Part 2, as the band launches into a heavy and oppressive, but exceedingly danceable, indie rock track.

Lyrically, the album does discuss death and the anxiety that surrounds it. However, for such a concept-heavy album, it doesn’t brood. Rather than making an album filled with the fear of death, Circa Waves do what they do best and fill Death and Love Pt 2 with high energy indie rock songs. Shuddall wanted to make an album that reminded him of his youth, thinking of indie clubs in Liverpool he frequented like Le Bateau and The Krazyhouse he “wanted to make an album that would remind me of going out as a kid”. Shuddall says “I just wanted to make loads of banging indie tunes! It’s slightly less profound, but much more fun”. This is perhaps most obvious in ‘Cherry Bomb’, a song he wrote about his wife, in which he talks of indie dancehalls and ripped leather jackets. The song itself is slower than the high-energy tempo of ‘Lost in the Fire’, while still remaining just as danceable. It felt, to me, very reminiscent of The Vaccines’ new releases. Shuddall’s romantic side doesn’t limit itself to ‘Cherry Bomb’, ‘Sunbeams’ talks of the reparative power of love, how he “need[s] to feel your sunbeams so I can start to live”.

Perhaps the song that best exemplifies the exploration of the two ideas that give the album its name, both death and love, is ‘Sweet Simple Thing’. An acoustic song with string sections, Shuddall talks about “longing for [his] sweet simple thing”. It feels as though it has come from his hospital room, a far cry from the images of indie dancehalls conjured up earlier in the album. Shuddall says that he feels “like a fraud” for calling life cruel. This is reflective of him saying “When I was in the hospital, I thought, ‘If I go now, I’ve had such an awesome life. I think my family will be fine’. I accepted it”. He reflects on people less fortunate and on other patients in his room, throughvivid descriptions of his hospital room,  half-eaten apples and fingerprints on televisions, saying “Only some of us get to see what true love means”.

Death and Love Pt 2 is a very personal reflection on Shuddal’s close brush with mortality, while still remaining an eminently danceable and energetic indie-rock album. It’s arguably the most mature outing for the Circa Waves while keeping the same youthful energy that made their earlier albums so exciting.

Words by James Gavin