{"id":587224,"date":"2026-04-16T06:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/587224\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T06:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T06:16:08","slug":"adult-kissing-luck-goodbye-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/587224\/","title":{"rendered":"ADULT.: Kissing Luck Goodbye Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a good time to be angry, horny, and queer. The electroclash revival has been pulsing for years and, with recent releases from scene originators Ladytron<\/a>, Peaches<\/a>, and Chicks on Speed<\/a>, as well as brainrotted young artists like MGNA Crrrta<\/a> and Tiffany Day<\/a>, it\u2019s now throbbing at full power. The stripped-down technopunk kept Lower East Side bars of ill repute gacked out in the months and years after 9\/11, soundtracking a party at ground zero that didn\u2019t just feel the terror of the moment but embraced the opportunity to build something new in its place. Despite its hedonistic reputation\u2014or, rather, in tandem with its hedonistic reputation\u2014electroclash was a way to fight oppression with the power of sounding super, super gay. Of course it\u2019s making a comeback.<\/p>\n

While Detroit\u2019s ADULT.<\/a> were part of the genre\u2019s initial spurt in the \u201900s, and even performed on the eponymous tour that emerged from New York\u2019s Electroclash Festival (inaugurated in October 2001, naturally), their music has always had a harder edge than that of their peers. The minimal, vinegary sound they\u2019ve developed over the last 30 years is closer in feel to the early EBM of DAF and Nitzer Ebb, while singer Nicola Kuperus\u2019 sloganeering is too pointed to be sexy. For her and Adam Lee Miller\u2014ADULT.\u2019s sole other member and Kuperus\u2019 spouse\u2014this music is an embodied form of community-making and critique, a way of serving vicious jeremiads whose potency is too strong to be ignored no matter how hard you\u2019re dancing. Peaches was right, you should fuck the pain away<\/a>; ADULT.\u2019s 10th album, Kissing Luck Goodbye, is here to incite revenge on the people who caused it in the first place.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Kissing Luck Goodbye feels like a soft reset for Kuperus and Miller. The duo greatly expanded their sample library, ripping random melodies from thrift-store records and manipulating their own field recordings. \u201cNo Song\u201d uses a snatch of static for its snare and what sounds like a kettle drum being played in a cave for its kick; a squealing synth sprints circles around \u201cNo One Is Coming\u201d\u2019s beefy bass line like a haunted theremin.<\/p>\n

Such attention to detail is crucial to the success of these songs. Unlike 2022\u2019s densely packed Becoming Undone<\/a>, Kissing Luck Goodbye feels lean and sinewy, in fighting shape. The songs sprint past with a minimalist economy that matches the intensity of Kuperus\u2019 vocals. Her style is rich with character, and she shifts between deliveries quickly and with conviction. At times she sounds like B-52\u2019s<\/a>\u2019 Cindy Wilson filling in for her bandmate Fred Schneider, using the sweetness of her natural voice to spike an off-beat exclamation into the music. \u201cSuck out your eyes\/Fuck your head,\u201d she sings over synths that dart like agitated minnows in \u201cDestroyers.\u201d She delivers many of her lyrics with the insouciance of Johnny Rotten<\/a>, like she\u2019s mocking your desire for a straightforward melody. \u201cYour entertainment has been\/disrupted,\u201d she sings in \u201cKissing Luck Goodbye,\u201d sounding like Anthony Kiedis reciting lines from Barbara Kruger. Any one of these vocal strategies would easily overwhelm less thought-out programming, but Kuperus\u2019 mildly campy sing-bark moves in tandem with the rough textures of the music she and Miller create together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a good time to be angry, horny, and queer. The electroclash revival has been pulsing for years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[776,88,216,777],"class_list":{"0":"post-587224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}