25 May 2012 - 0 Comments

Luckless announce the release of their debut album on May 25th entitled simply, Luckless.

Luckless are a self-described melancholic indie-rock duo, consisting of Will Wood on drums and guitarist/vocalist Ivy Rossiter.  Drawing on influences as diverse as Portishead, PJ Harvey and Sparklehorse, the duo’s fiery combination of Wood’s vintage drums and Rossiter’s Hagstrom-generated distortion ebbs and swells with each carefully constructed song.

Rather than pay heed to current fads and fashions, Luckless focuses on crafting lasting songs from a myriad of influences, be them musical, literary or artistic. Rossiter spent her early years getting bruised and battered at local punk rock shows, all-the-while looking up to international post-punk giants At The Drive In and Refused.  In Luckless, she fuses the seriousness and aggression of these early influences, lyrical inspiration from authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami, together with the musicality of songwriters like Patti Smith and PJ Harvey.

The result of this musical synthesis sounds like an engine run on the thick oil of a kick drum in an empty hall, a wail of overdriven guitar and the howl of a thousand heartbreaks.  Rossiter’s vocals waver over walls of drums and guitar, yelping and sighing at turns. The latest single Hawks leads with a warm intensifying electric guitar riff and the deep vocals of Rossiter and Wood uttering 'Save all your teeth and smiles, I’ll string them in a circle, to hold me in when I go wild, corral the maddened world we pass through.' Guitar, bass and percussion swell into the surging, propelling chorus and lead us back to the backbone of the song; that memorable guitar riff.  The album’s closing track, Bring This To AnEnd starts as a prettily finger-picked melody with melancholy feathery vocals, building slowly to an abrupt change of mood propelled by Wood’s insistent drumbeat; Rossiter’s lower register kicks into the ghostly repeated lyric 'The tidal pulse brings you back, all the driftwood turns to ash, the empty beat will bring you back.'

Luckless recorded at Roundhead Studios, and together with audio engineer Jordan Stone (Wilco, The Pyjama Club, Crowded House), the band spent 12 months fine-tuning the album.  "We wanted to put as much polish and care as possible into this record,” states Rossiter. “We worked in an environment where we felt the pressure to perform and get things right, rather than being in a bedroom recording an infinite number of takes.  We took the time to get great sounds out of the drums and the guitars, rather than trying to fix it all later inside a computer. We owe a lot to our engineer and to the studio for the way this record sounds.”

The final presentation of this 11 track album is distinctive and beautifully crafted, much like the music held inside.  It features an elegantly handmade, letter pressed cover, a collaboration between Luckless and graphic designer Aimee Carruthers from Paper Cut Design.  Overall, this is a record that exudes seriousness and consideration; the care that Luckless has put into their musical and artistic work lends weight to this remarkable debut.

​Luckless is released through Border Music and DRMNZ.

http://www.luckless.co.nz/

http://www.facebook.com/soluckless

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