Luluc – Sweet Thief
On their latest album, Luluc detail the fragile beauty of the world around them in soul-stirring melodies and mystical arrangements
Since their 2008 debut, Luluc have been immersed in the beauties of the everyday, spellbound by the delicate majesty of nature: the view from a “small window” as 2014’s Passerby framed it. On the duo’s latest record Sweet Thief, a river addresses a mountain, two ravens ponder where to go and an oak’s roots become a symbol of hope. Recorded after moving back to their native Australia after years in the US, Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett’s follow-up to 2023’s Diamonds is hushed and intimate, as if welcoming you into the pair’s living room, lit with the inviting glow of 60s-inspired melodies and carpeted in soft, resonant harmonies.
The humble record tiptoes in with fingerpicked guitar and brushed percussion (courtesy of J Mascis) and a fleeting poetic lyric. The aptly named lead single Rewarding Melody is classic Luluc with its stirring Beach Boys melody, clouded in misty reverb, while No One Else’s Pen is a silvery ribbon of a love song. But the album’s grandest moments are when the duo loosen the arrangements. Saxophones flail haphazardly through the sombre, soulful chords of Dopamine Slot Machine, and closer Homesick in L.A. is masterfully cinematic, guitar spiralling out through the steady meditative melody into spiritual reverie.
Listen to: Rewarding Melody, Dopamine Slot Machine, Homesick in L.A.