Safe As Houses – Lucky Lucky
Safe as Houses dispatches their new single and title track to their latest album, “Lucky Lucky.” “Lucky Lucky,” aside from bearing a repetitive groove that does little to exploit the phenomenally gifted skillset of its players, has a couple of key elements within its framework that – on paper – should translate into a pretty attractive pop song, but that’s just not the way this single shakes out. The lyrics don’t feel as inspired as those that we find in other songs on the record, and save for a sexy string arrangement, the instrumentation falls short of fireworks on most every front.
“Lucky Lucky” isn’t completely devoid of substance; as noted, the gorgeous guitar play does a pretty good job of compensating for the innate lyricism that adorns the verses, and while they’re strikingly similar in tone to what China showed off in the stellar And Then Nothing Happened, they’ve got enough of a unique texture to set them apart and make them distinguishable from their talented rival’s sound. The mix acts as more of a villain than a friend to Safe as Houses here, which took me by surprise considering how well-defined their previous work has been.
The percussion is the most glaring flop in “Lucky Lucky,” as it’s literally all over the place from the jump. I think I can understand what the band was trying to go for – eccentricities ala alternative folk maybe? – but it’s just a shade over the line for what this composition demands out of a drumbeat. This kind of thing might have worked for Mumford and Sons ten years ago, but we’re not living in the late 2000’s anymore. Tastes have changed, and arguably, gotten to such a discriminatory point where artists as talented as Safe as Houses have to keep up with the current narrative or risk losing their credibility altogether.
It’s a shame that the vocal track doesn’t get more attention in this master mix. Much like the guitar parts, I can tell that it has a ton of incredible warmth that would have made this song so much more engaging from beginning to end. The bittersweet serenades that we find throughout the tracklist of the album that this song takes its title from are some of the best that I’ve heard all year, which makes this single even more disappointing than it would have been as a standalone piece.
This track is hardly Safe as Houses’ best moment, but the record that it was cut from is a different story completely. If you’ve never heard their music before now, I recommend avoiding this single in favor of acquiring its titular LP, which presents a totally different perspective of this deeply gifted group of musicians.
Safe as Houses have got a lot more work to do before they can consider themselves ready for the primetime, but if they can manage to get their biggest issues under control before the decade is out, I think that they can still enter the 2020’s as successfully as the other skilled indie rock bands in their scene undoubtedly will.
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