Live fast, die young was famously the title of a biography of James Dean. But as a motto, it could apply to a growing number of young British rock bands whose profile soars in the social media age, only for the intense scrutiny to become too much to bear. When Ellery Roberts, the lead singer of the Mancunian "heavy pop" band Wu Lyf, decided to quit the band last week, it was probably fitting that he announced his departure via YouTube rather than through a more conventional press release or press conference.
Formed in 2008, Wu Lyf had strong connections with Mancunian musical aristocracy. Their manager, Warren Bramley, previously worked with Tony Wilson, the founder of Factory Records, which launched Joy Division and then New Order.
In a note left on YouTube, since deleted, Roberts wrote: "I am done, There is nothing here that inspires/ interests me beyond the emptiness for dreams. And I don't want to spend my life asleep… The sincerity... was lost in the bullshit of maintaining face in the world we live."
Commenting on his departure, the influential American music website Fader observed that: "Wu Lyf is just one more in the list of early deaths in our current rock landscape, suggesting that maybe the genre is suffering from the hyper trajectory of music today. Basically, the lifespan of a band that ought to have raged on for years and garnered a passionate and cultish following can now be wrapped up in short of a decade."
Last summer for instance, Christopher Owens, lead singer of US rock group, Girls, announced his departure from the group with a tweet. In recent memory, relatively high profile UK bands such as The Sand Band, Viva Brother, Kid British and Vagabond have split.
So is Wu Lyf's demise symptomatic of the accelerated trajectory of a modern day band's lifespan? "The goal posts have changed," says Jeff Barrett, founder of Heavenly Records, the label that discovered and signed bands such as Manic Street Preachers, Doves, Saint Etienne and, in the last year, Stealing Sheep, Toy and Charlie Boyer and The Voyeurs. "But it's never been easy, it's not supposed to be. You don't do it because it's easy, you do it because you want to be in a band. So you do what ever it takes to make it – you sleep on floors, you nick drinks, you blag drugs."
The decline in record sales in recent years means record companies are less inclined to put long-term investment into bands, which means the days of huge advances are long gone, and the pressure on those bands who do sign a deal with a major label to deliver a return quickly is increased. The insatiable demand from media and blogs to be the first to uncover the latest new thing only accelerates that pace. With little money to be made for most bands from record sales, there is also a pressure to create a profile as soon as possible that will help them sell tickets for live gigs, the increasingly important revenue stream.
If the reporting of Wu Lyf's split is disproportionate to the sole album they recorded, that's also reflective of an unfilled desire from music fans for a band with an air of mystery in an age where everything is available at the click of a button. There is, for some, too much information. Many of us want our musicians to be distant and retain an air of mystery. In the halcyon days of Factory Records, Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson encouraged New Order to remain aloof; better to be slightly abstruse and allow the music to speak for itself. The less you said, the more people would talk, went the reasoning. With Bramley, Wu Lyf adopted a similar tactic of deliberate obsfucation, and in an age where most other bands make themselves only too available to public and press, it worked well. The name Wu Lyf stood for World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation and they weren't so much a band as a movement, they insisted, although some critics questioned whether the substance behind the subterfuge warranted the hype. Guardian journalist Sean Michaels voiced these concerns last year when he pointed out last year that Wu Lyf are "so good at being a band that nobody's asked about their music yet".
A similar desire for an air of mystery was also evident in the frenzied reaction last month to DJ Harvey's first UK gigs in 10 years after self-imposed exile in Los Angeles. Although in Harvey's case there is no doubt he is a great DJ, and a true original, the mythology that had built around in his absence had reached almost biblical proportions, a situation which, to his credit, amuses him. "I don't know really how or why it happened. I didn't do anything to feed it," he says. "I've never contributed to any blog or anything online, which may well have helped. I just keep away from all that, and let it bubble away and let people stir it up for themselves. If there's not much information people tend to fill in the rest of the gaps themselves. If there's only two colours, people sometimes fill in all the other colours themselves until they've got themselves a rainbow."
Wu Lyf may yet resurface in another guise. Roberts's dramatic resignation from the band did end with the message to his band mates that "I'm gonna stay on email so keep in touch". At the time of going to press, Wu Lyf, naturally, were unavailable for comment.
