Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys release new album Heaving
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys release new album Heaving
Heaving, the first musical departure from Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys recent tape series, is a vivid, visceral and unbounded exploration of sonic storytelling. Relying on the idea articulated by poet and essayist Anne Carson that “every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior, yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside”, Kruger dove into the composition process through performance, rather than with the pen. The album offered the artist, and hopes offer the audience, a coming home to the body through a physical relationship to sound.
“With this new album, I wanted to reach a sub layer of my skin, and of the song,” she reveals. “To get closer to the sound, effort and energy of the pulse that pushes and pulls me, both violently and tenderly. To draw something out, mostly through the use of my voice, which in the moment of experimenting and writing, I understood to be a part of my body, myself, being offered up, without knowing how that offering would present itself. To invite strangeness. To risk oozing and excess. Or the opposite.”
Through this process, Kruger didn’t want as much to relay something, but instead discover – and then precisely transmit – what is there. “There is something about the physical act of singing and shaping sounds that allows one to transcend the usual cerebral boundaries of the written or conventionally spoken word,” she explains. “Melody, rhythm and rhyme have the capacity to carry one into a more intuitive state, in which words and phrases are less bound by pre-conceived concepts.”
On her sixth record, Kruger very specifically uses the pulses, the judders, the throbbing, and the echoes afforded by electronic elements (sometimes also created by the voice) to entrance the body, while the lyrics confront and converse in a more explicit way – trying to merge and experiment with different forms of feeling and processing. “I wanted to speak directly to big, scary and seductive ideas and experiences. Around desire, fear of death, damage, disintegration, deep love – its opposite, if there is – and its accompanying loneliness.”
The musicians who join Kruger and carve out the detailed and idiosyncratic landscape of sound on the record, are Liú Mottes (guitar, bass synthesiser, bass guitar, piano), Martin Perret (drums), Jean-Louise Parker (violin, voice), Calvin Siderfin (bass), Andreas Miranda (bass), Gidon Carmel (drums) and André Leo (guitar). All of the musicians have been involved in the various formations of The Lost Boys over the years and have played an integral role in shaping the dynamic sound the band have developed over time, both live and in studio.
This album encapsulates that full spectrum of sound, and one of the striking aspects of Heaving is the changeability in its 10 songs. “Burning Building” thrives in sudden shifts of tone and volume and vocal phrasing that turn this short, spiky track into a post-punk anthem for the time, and then, just two songs later, “Front Row” takes its time, slowly unwinding a story of desire on the back of muted percussion, eerie guitars, full throated bass, and near hymnal-backing vocals.
Although lyrically it draws on deeply personal experiences, Heaving also has flashes of humour that veils or highlights truths – a playfulness that subverts and invites honesty. Kruger wanted to expand, stretch and dramatise her approach to songwriting on this album – to push her voice and performance until something new appeared. Once she’d found the seed of something worth exploring, she and the band would start introducing instrumentation to the skeleton of beat and lyrics. The addition of violas, guitars, drums, bass and piano would complicate the meaning and bring out different readings and feelings.
The title track for the album, heaving – a word that recurs throughout the 10 songs – carries with it both the effort and inevitability involved in the process, and in the themes Kruger was exploring. A crowded room of sweating bodies heaves; there is the heaving of her chest; the strata heave with the faulting of a rock; the way she heaves a sigh of relief. It is a visceral and physical experience. “I wanted this album to be less ethereal somehow. Rooted in the depths, of my body, of my lover’s body, of the earth, where it is dark and wet, and where you might find rot but you will also certainly find life. To somehow get pulled into the moment, through a focus on sensation. A lot of the lyrics deal with touch, smell, taste. The body, and all it holds, imagined intimately, almost as landscape, but also for what it is. And for what will happen to it in time. A reckoning with death and loss that might allow for a more vibrant understanding and engagement with life.”
The band, who have earned a reputation for their engaging and intense live performances, will be touring the album in Europe from April this year.
Tour Dates
Tuesday 04 April – Slow Club – Freiburg – DE
Wednesday 05 April – Fabriktheater – Zurich – CH
Thursday 06 April – Cascina Bellaria – Sezzadio – IT
Friday 07 April – Point 11 – Sion – CH
Saturday 08 April – Circolo Gagarin – Varese – IT
Sunday 09 April – Circolo Dong – Macerata – IT
Monday 10 April – Bagni D´Elsa – Fosso Sejore – IT
Tuesday 11 April – Fat Art Club – Terni
Wednesday 12 April – Efesto – Bologna – IT
Friday 14 April – Supersonic – Paris – FR
Saturday 15 April – La Malterie – Lille – FR
Sunday 16 April – Cineto – Amsterdam – NL
Wednesday 19 April – Z-Bau – Nuremberg – DE
Thursday 20 April – Johanniskirche – Bielefeld – DE
Tuesday 02 May – Moritzbastei – Leipzig – DE
Wednesday 03 May – Hafenklang – Hamburg – DE
Thursday 04 May – Glocksee – Hannover – DE
Friday 05 May – Lido – Berlin – DE
Wednesday 24 May – Jazz Club Tonne – Dresden – DE
Friday 26 May – Spitalkeller – Offenburg – DE
Saturday 27 May – Psych in Bloom – Esslingen – DE
Sunday 28 May – Hafen 2 – Offenbach – DE
Saturday 12 August – Void Festival – Bad Kotzing – DE
(Photographer – Francis Broek)
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys are an art pop ambient noise band based in Berlin. The group, fronted by South African born artist, Lucy Kruger, create music that is full of atmosphere and intensity.
The band has been touring the albums throughout Germany and Europe over the last year, performing at the likes of Rheeperbahn, Fusion, Maifeld Derby, Wave-Gotik Treffen, South of Silence, Immergut, Left of The Dial, and Synästhesie.
After releasing the third and final album in the ‘Tapes Trilogy’ in April 2022 and touring the albums extensively through the summer, the band are shifting attention to their upcoming album which will be released on 7 April 2023.
The range of material and storytelling captured in the trilogy, and the addition of new material from the upcoming album have given the group a chance to explore a live set that drifts between introverted and ecstatic.
They have announced the upcoming album launch, which will take place at Lido in Berlin on the 5th of May along with a Spring 2023 European Tour.
