You can hear straight away on Lucky Now that this is a record that knows exactly where it is. Not geographically, though that matters later, but emotionally.
Lande Hekt has always written as if she’s thinking out loud, but earlier records carried a sense of urgency, songs written to provide support or counterpoint to something still being figured out. Those albums dealt openly with sobriety, queerness, and the after-effects of childhood, often with a slightly clenched intensity. Lucky Now sounds like the stillness and assuredness after all that.
Part of that stillness comes from Hekt’s return to live in Exeter from Bristol. The album carries the particular mix of calm and unease of returning to a place that remembers you better than you remember yourself. Making sense of this transition is a common thread throughout Lucky Now, with a focus on the small things that matter most. The opening track, ‘Kitchen II’, unfolds like early light on a Formica worktop in an attic flat, leafy plants catching whatever sun the morning offers. It’s a song about remembering a relationship through its domestic residue, candlelit kitchens, nights talked through rather than dramatised. The arrangement is deliberately simple, and Hekt sings with an ease that feels new, a smile you can hear rather than see. When the chiming guitar thickens into crunch at the end, it’s those memories sharpening rather than emotion escalating.
The title track toys with familiarity, another song about coming home, or realising you already have. Jangle guitar nostalgia sets expectations, then the chorus shifts sideways into something yearning and swaying, lifted by close harmonies that hit home. The lyrics stay plainspoken but also quietly poetic. An argument by an electric fire. A crisp packet in a storm. Promises of sobriety. Images that might have once felt confessional are now observations.
‘Rabbits’ leans further into late-80s indie memory, arpeggios driving a shoegaze-adjacent swell that recalls Lush or early Flying Nun releases. It rises and falls pleasantly, almost lulling, though the chorus keeps a gentle insistence and flourish all of its own. Hekt’s influences have always been worn openly, but now it’s clear how lightly they’re being carried.
There’s a confidence across Lucky Now that is most clearly realised in single ‘Favourite Pair of Shoes.” Dual vocals lock into octave harmony, hooks dig in without effort, and the shift between bright verses and crunchier chorus lands cleanly. It’s the sort of song you find yourself humming later, with no recollection of when it took hold. Earlier Hekt songs sometimes strained under what they were trying to articulate. This one just gets on with it.
Elsewhere, even where things are pulled inward on ‘Middle of the Night’, Hekt is content to revisit familiar territory in a slower and more exposed way: anxiety, sobriety, the loneliness of quiet hours. Sorting through rubbish collected in a bag. Waking up next to someone and knowing happiness is present even if it’s never named. Where earlier records felt like survival documents, this feels observational, still tender but less taut.
The second half is less varied, and is more about maintaining than trying to impress. This, after all, is indie pop comfortable in its own, broken-in cherry red DMs. ‘Circular’ shines brighter, with more electricity, while ‘A Million Broken Hearts’ has the feel of a single, with catchy interludes where drums step back before snapping back into place. ‘My Imaginary Friend’ stands out narratively, its charm rooted in story rather than sonic shift, a nod towards Sarah Records lineage without slipping into pastiche.
‘The Sky’ carries heavier existential weight, melancholy counterbalanced by a cautious sense of possibility. The restraint before the final chorus matters, with Hekt holding back when others might push. ‘Submarine’ exposes the album’s quietest ache, a hymnal chorus floating above lines about never quite belonging, missed connections, and institutionalised self-improvement. The disconnection here is with the self as much as others, and the realisation that often comes too late that it’s not your fault.
‘Coming Home’ closes the record with a gentle assurance. Dual vocals drift through familiar smells and sounds, the reassurance of a place that still recognises you. The final shift in rhythm, acoustic strum sharing space with jangling guitars and reverb haze, nods faintly towards Manchester indie circa 1986 without turning into homage. It feels like the album waving goodbye.
Lucky Now won’t convert people who distrust this kind of music on principle. But for those attuned to indie pop’s frequencies, it offers something much better than merely adding to the collection. There’s a genuine ease here, and an honesty that doesn’t seek applause. Overall though, Lande Hekt finally exudes a steadiness that might just reel in even the more hardened cynics by accident, if not by design.
‘Lucky Now’ is released on 30 January, via Tapete Records
