Luluc, the Australian duo of Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett, will release their sixth album, Sweet Thief, on 10th July via Community Music. The follow-up to 2023’s Diamonds takes its title from a line in a Shakespeare sonnet, which Randell and Hassett press into service as a metaphor for the modern world — an ever-changing kaleidoscope of love and hate, beauty and bloodshed, underpinned by a constant grapple for our attention. Below, watch the video for lead single Rewarding Melody.
Sketched out in Brooklyn over the summer of 2024 in the studio the pair have spent the past decade building, the ten-song album has its roots in solitude. “That space is quiet and quite isolated, but it’s where I feel deeply connected to the people I love, and also to a much broader sense of shared experience that we’ve all got. To me, that’s the most important thing about the work,” Randell explains.
Where Diamonds gently plumbed unspoken depths, Sweet Thief turns its attention outward — to the exploitation and existential manipulation that has crept into almost every aspect of our lives. Rather than simply hold up a mirror, the duo prise these notions apart, looking for the beating heart at the core however obscured it might be.
Rewarding Melody is a fine way in. On the page it reads as a simple love song — Randell sings “I’ll make for you a rewarding melody / One you can come to anytime you need” — but the delivery introduces a dryness that pulls against the lyric’s apparent sweetness. Old friend J Mascis adds jaunty drum percussion, wrapped inside Randell and Hassett’s warm production.
“We’re constantly told that we have to be part of specific groups, that we’re part of movements, but life is actually an individual experience,” Randell says of the album’s overarching theme. “What you do with your life is in your hands and no one else’s. Doing harm to others, trying to get one over on other people, is all based on delusions and false promises. Far more important is the individual relationship you have with your life.”
Album Pre-order: https://stem.ffm.to/sweetthief