Lucky Soul are back with their third album, entitled Hard Lines on Crystal Paris Records. Whilst the surfaces may shimmer, at its heart Hard Lines is a record of frustration, anger, and – through it all – hope, written in response to a world which your new family must attempt to navigate. Soaring torch-song (Hurts Like A) Bee Sting, for instance, was composed shortly after the Tories got back into power in 2010, and completed to the backdrop of Brexit in 2016; the tougher, afrobeat-funk of Livin’ On a Question Mark, meanwhile, began life as the riot police marched through Camberwell in 2011, and discusses a timeless sense of disillusionment. Yet here are songs, too, of staying together, and pulling the people that matter close to you (see the sultry, progressively-stormy soundscapes of One Touch, or the bittersweet pop rush of Too Much). Its slow-build conception may have led many to assume that Lucky Soul had gone their separate ways, but the steely determination, hard-won patience and self-described “obsession” of Laidlaw’s to get the band together again enriches the textured but instantly-infectious feel to Hard Lines.
