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Demo proved a winning start for Lucid Liars new single You Can't Lose


By Margaret Chrystall


FOR Inverness band Lucid Liars it was worth the gamble of picking up a half-finished 2014 demo track in lockdown – it’s the new single putting big new music plans on the cards.

Out on Friday, the single You Can’t Lose/I Can’t Win with its fresh sound looks like the ace in the pack for the electronic rock band’s future release agenda.

Lucid Liars - clockwise from top left - Rikki Mackenzie, Daniel Boles, Craig Christison and Jack Nicolson.
Lucid Liars - clockwise from top left - Rikki Mackenzie, Daniel Boles, Craig Christison and Jack Nicolson.

Singer Rikki Mackenzie explained: “We are definitely a band that likes to plan things out in advance, especially when it comes to writing and recording.

“But because of lockdown, this single has been made kind of backwards, really.

“The way we would normally write a song is, I would sit down with our drummer Jack Nicolson or with keyboard-player Craig Christison and we would get a blueprint of it – and spend probably far too much time getting the drums right!

“We’ve got this thing where we like every song to have a pulse and creating that is usually the longest part of the process.”

But the enforced isolation of lockdown and the expense of recording drums in a studio changed all that.

“When we were trying to write and we couldn’t be in the same room – all the guitars, bass, strings and piano were finished individually – yet we didn’t have our pulse, that was quite difficult.

“So when we found this half-finished demo in April, the drum tracks were very usable though we thought it would be a challenge to give it the sound we have now. But after a week’s recording, we thought, ‘This sounds quite good for something stuck on a hard drive for six years!

“And it has been an experience as well.”

It has triggered something fresh for Lucid Liars. And now, instead of the original pre-lockdown planned release of an album on Friday, there will be this single, following up on April single release Pretty Little Things. And now to come will be not one but two albums, linked by the developing evolution of the music.

The band’s core was formed in 2018, out of former synth-pop/synth-rock band Flying Batteries (2009-15).

Lucid Liars saw the four friends, including bassist Daniel Boles, get back together.

“By the end of Flying Batteries, life had been getting in the way a little bit – jobs were coming up, some of us were having kids,” Rikki explained.

But with a new name, quickly the Lucid Liars new sound “sort of clicked”.

“We decided not to go back to the synth-rock stuff we were doing.

“This music just feels more like our identity now, and a band identity.”

New single You Can’t Lose/I Can’t Win is out now on all digital stores including Spotify, Apple Music etc. More: www.lucidliars.com and Facebook: @LucidLiars


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