On ‘Kissing Luck Goodbye’, ADULT. refuse the comforts of retrospection and instead double down on confrontation, producing a record that feels less like a continuation than a controlled detonation. For over two decades, Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller have cultivated a language of abrasion and defiance, yet this tenth album intensifies their vocabulary with a clarity that makes its hostility more legible, not less. Working alongside producer Nolan Gray, the duo harness a newly expanded arsenal of sounds without sacrificing the immediacy that has always defined their work. The result is an album that sounds surgically precise even at its most overwhelming, a paradox that becomes central to its power.
“Affordable Decorating” opens with a sense of domestic unease, transforming the banal into something vaguely menacing. Kuperus’ voice cuts through the circuitry with clipped insistence, as though narrating the slow corrosion of everyday life under invisible pressures. Miller’s programming responds with restless agitation, rhythms that feel engineered to deny comfort. The track establishes a thematic preoccupation that persists throughout the album: the collapse of the personal into the political, the home as a site of quiet destabilization.
The title track, “Wishing Luck Goodbye,” sharpens that premise into something more declarative. Luck, in this context, is not merely superstition but a metaphor for passivity, for the hope that circumstances might resolve themselves without intervention. Kuperus delivers her lines like a series of ultimatums, her phrasing both theatrical and severe, while the instrumental framework churns with mechanical insistence. The sense of propulsion here is unmistakable, as though the song itself refuses to remain static.
“R U 4 $ALE” stands as one of the album’s most incisive moments, its title alone encapsulating a worldview in which identity, ethics, and even resistance are subject to commodification. Kuperus’ repeated invocations feel deliberately confrontational, implicating both the listener and the broader systems they inhabit. Miller constructs a dense lattice of sound beneath her, incorporating distorted samples and percussive fragments that seem to collide rather than align. The chaos is purposeful, mirroring the destabilizing forces the song critiques.
With “No One is Coming,” the album reaches a kind of ideological fulcrum. Built around a bass-driven framework that borders on the anthemic, the track rejects the notion of external salvation with blunt force. Kuperus’ delivery is stripped of ornament, her refrain landing with an almost physical impact. The underlying rhythm, derived from a fragmented and imperfect source, reinforces the song’s message: even the structures we rely on are prone to breakdown. What emerges is not despair but a stark call to agency. “No Song” functions as a conceptual interruption, its very title suggesting absence while its execution insists on presence. The piece plays with expectation, denying conventional structure in favor of something more fragmentary. It feels like a deliberate refusal to perform coherence, a reminder that not everything must resolve into recognizable form.
“Freaks” and “None of It’s Fun” push the album into more volatile territory. The former revels in otherness, reclaiming the label as both accusation and badge, while the latter accelerates into a near-breathless critique of spectacle and desensitization. Kuperus’ voice becomes increasingly elastic, veering between controlled articulation and something closer to a snarl, while Miller’s production amplifies the sense of overload. The density of sound here is striking; layers accumulate to the point where individual elements blur, yet the overall effect remains sharply focused. “Human(e) Volume” introduces a subtle shift, its title hinting at the precarious balance between amplification and erasure. The track interrogates how much of oneself can be projected before meaning dissolves into noise. Kuperus navigates this ambiguity with a performance that feels simultaneously exposed and guarded, her voice alternating between intimacy and distance.
“So Unpleasant” and “Destroyers” form a closing diptych that encapsulates the album’s broader concerns. The former leans into discomfort as a necessary condition, rejecting the expectation that art should soothe or reassure. Its textures are deliberately abrasive, its rhythms unyielding. “Destroyers,” by contrast, gathers the album’s disparate threads into a final, uncompromising statement. Beginning with a relatively restrained framework, it gradually accumulates force, its elements saturating until they verge on collapse. Yet unlike earlier iterations of ADULT.’s sound, the duo exercise a newfound discipline, maintaining coherence even as the track approaches dissolution. Kuperus’ closing vocal passage, delivered with stark clarity, reframes the album’s fury as something more enduring than mere reaction.
Throughout ‘Kissing Luck Goodbye’, the interplay between Kuperus and Miller remains central. Her voice functions not just as a narrative device but as an instrument of confrontation, while his production constructs environments that challenge rather than support. Gray’s role as producer is felt in the album’s expanded sonic range, the way disparate elements are integrated into a cohesive yet volatile whole. What distinguishes this record is not simply its intensity but its sense of purpose. The anger that permeates these songs is neither diffuse nor performative; it is directed, considered, and ultimately transformative. ADULT. do not offer escape, nor do they pretend that resolution is imminent. Instead, they insist on engagement, on the necessity of response in the face of systems that thrive on disengagement. ‘Kissing Luck Goodbye’ stands as both an artifact of its moment and a refusal to be contained by it, a work that channels frustration into something bracingly articulate and unavoidably present.
Find out more by visiting Dais Records | Kuperus / Miller | Adult Period | Bandcamp.
