With their second single ‘Luxury Apartments’, the elusive UK alt-rock trio Courtesy Car peel back the layers of familiarity to reveal the quiet disorientation that comes with watching your world be slowly paved over.
Rather than chase grandiose choruses or splashy hooks, ‘Luxury Apartments’ unfurls like a slow walk through a once-loved neighbourhood that doesn’t quite fit anymore. The track pulses with a subtle unease; guitars flicker, percussion keeps its distance, and vocals hover just close enough to feel intimate, without ever letting you grasp their full intent. The production is minimal yet meticulous, lending the track its haunting texture and uneasy stillness.
Lyrically, the song bypasses direct protest in favour of something murkier. There’s no overt anger, no slogans or sirens, just a quiet, gnawing question: what exactly are we mourning when our cities change? Is it the brick and mortar, or the version of ourselves that lived there, now gone?
At its heart, this is a song about dissociation. The feeling of walking past buildings that look exactly the same but don’t recognise you anymore. Or maybe you don’t recognise them. Maybe you’ve become a stranger in your own story.
In a time when artists are encouraged to “build a brand,” Courtesy Car are doing something far more subversive, they’re stripping identity back to its essentials. No grand reveal. No fixed image. Just an open-ended question, wrapped in song.
With ‘Luxury Apartments’, they capture a kind of emotional static of modern disconnection distilled into sound. It’s the soundtrack to the moment after the protest, when you walk home, look around, and wonder if you still belong.
And that’s the quiet genius of Courtesy Car, they don’t need to be loud to leave a mark. They just need to be honest, even if that honesty is wrapped in uncertainty.
