(Photographer – Mitch Störing)
In “Woolf,” the third single from Pale Bloom, Lucy Kruger conjures a haunting journey across time, memory, and voice. The track begins with a tentative, halting voice stepping into a river, gradually swelling into a polyphonic chorus that seems to absorb echoes of voices from the past. It crescendos into a soaring, prophetic refrain—Heaven is twisting / fraying / heaven is bending / ageing…—hovering like a lens flare over the song’s lush, unpredictable textures.
Guitar and viola weave wildly around her vocals as Lucy reaches back into the 20th century, recognizing a twin in her muse. With the heart of Virginia Woolf in hand, she brushes against the freedom both women have sought, producing a sonic alchemy that might traverse time to lighten the weight of history.
Lucy describes “‘Woolf’ as a twisted love letter—or a summoning, or a sentencing—to a godless void, to Virginia, to the patriarchy, to my past self.” Divided into four distinct chapters, the song mirrors her exploration of multiple selves, a timeline and tempo that music alone allows her to reconcile, turning uncertainty into a space of creative possibility.
Unlike the Lost Boys’ earlier albums, produced within a specific moment in time, Pale Bloom emerged slowly, trying to suspend a creation myth in its amber – an origin tale that is ancient and complex; full of mystery and metaphor – that seeks neither clarification nor end.
Each Lost Boys’ release ventures into new musical and lyrical territory. Of them all, Pale Bloom reaches furthest back into childhood, unconsciously locating the rhythms and narrative styles rooted in the strictures of a religious upbringing. Sorting through the forgotten chords, refrains and melodies from old nursery rhymes and folk songs, they found a desire to bend these inherited sounds toward more personal truths.
This impulse is present throughout the album, audible in Kruger’s equally sonorous and euphoric voice, as she wraps the various lyrical forms around her own longing, mourning and desire, preparing them to land within the band’s lush and generous subversion of the remembered rhythms.
Unlike their appearance on Heaving and A Human Home, the strings here are less affected, having taken on a more sombre and serious character. They stretch towards a complex kind of heaven, made possible by the weight and grounding of the grooves, which are both stoic and expressive. The guitars roam freely in between stretching, voluminous spaces, and are as grinding as they are gentle. The players on the record are Lucy Kruger (voice and guitar), Liú Mottes (guitar), Jean-Louise Parker (viola), Gidon Carmel (drums) and Reuben Kemp (bass).
Kruger recorded the album with her bandmates and close collaborator, André Leo, split across their various studios in Berlin, over the course of six months. The album was mixed by Simon Ratcliffe.
Pale Bloom will be out through Unique Records in February 2026.
“A perfect storm of posturing gothic art pop with a grungy, low-tempo backbone, spellbindingly dark and angsty, and flecked with violin lines that lent the songs a satisfyingly Venus In Furs-esque eeriness.”
CLASH
“South African-born Kruger is the real deal, with enough attitude and drama for a few bands… She possesses a death stare that looks both through you and into your soul at the same time.”
BROOKLYN VEGAN
“An intense, sonically charged atmosphere fueled by noise-infused rock, ambient pop and playful experimentation makes Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys ever so addictive. Whether you ache for tender, finger-picked confessions or long for the release of gritty, guitar catharsis, the Berlin-based outfit offers a cure.”
ATWOOD MAGAZINE
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