Name: Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys
Nationality: South African
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, guitarist
Recent release: Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys' "Heaving" is out now via Unique. It is the title track to the upcoming new studio album, scheduled for release on April 7th 2023.
Recommendations: Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson; Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval.

If you enjoyed this interview with Lucy Kruger and would like to stay up to date with her music, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I’ve always loved singing and took all the chances I could get while I was at school. But it was only when I was about 16 and my brother’s girlfriend started learning to play the guitar that I understood more about what music could be, and could mean.

Our family went away for a weekend at some point, and she and her guitar came with us. One of those evenings, she played a song that she had written, as well as a cover of a Joni Mitchell song. I was extremely moved by her singing - and her song - and her interpretation of this other song that was so full of things. It was a very beautiful window, and I wanted the chance to explore, and offer something of the same.

I went to guitar lessons shortly after that, and also bought Joni Mitchell’s Blue. And so it began.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

I’m not sure I see much. I suppose it’s just a network of feelings that complicates and finds nuance with repetition. Like a sixth embodied sense.

I have no clear image, or understanding of how it influences the process, and perhaps it’s because it’s something that you develop a relationship with from when you’re so young. It’s so interwoven with your experience of the world.

Perhaps it’s one of the art forms that is least cerebral for me. There is a physicality to it that allows more of an intuitive approach to the creative process.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I think I started off trying to say and explore and present too much. To offer too complex a story and sound, and cover the entirety of identity and experience. Then I stripped it away completely, so that it was bare, and barely audible.

Now I’m learning to play again, and to be less afraid of performance. Honesty in art is such a confusing concept.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Oh gosh. This is a very big question, and one that I feel is much more easily - and for me, honestly - explored in the abstract and emotional space of song. A place where I feel much more comfortable to make a mess, and to contradict.

Mostly my music is some kind of making sense of being a body in the world, and so much of that is about grappling with identity.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

To try and touch the inbetween - the strange, tender, sometimes unseen, but often shared experiences.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

Perhaps I sit somewhere in the middle - although, I think music is made for so many reasons and there is room for all of it. I think that meaning often comes from variations on what we know.

So much of our experience and understanding is based on context and there is real beauty and importance in finding nuanced, detailed and specific ways of saying and expressing something that has perhaps already been said. When we repeat something over and over it starts to lose its power. Something altered, a surprise, can offer an opportunity for understanding, electricity, and a new perspective.

In terms of my own approach, I think I just try to stay within my own process and try not to be too afraid to play.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

To stay, I think, more than anything. To keep returning. To the desk, guitar, computer. To keep asking questions, but also not to question the process of questioning too much. To do to do to do to do.

I think a constant relationship with craft means that it doesn’t become a big scary unattainable thing - creating.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

There is a scary amount of lack of routine in my life so this is not an easy task. I try to always write, and to read. To hopefully move a little. And to listen, if there is time.

The only absolute constant in my life is morning coffee.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

My album Sleeping Tapes for Some Girls was never meant to be an album. It started off as small songs written in my room. They felt anaemic to me.



Once I had written about five of them I understood more about what they were - about what they offered me, and therefore what they could possibly offer somebody else. Quiet songs to keep one company on difficult evenings.

I named my audience and continued writing in this specific framework, which was very liberating.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I think I’ve always done both and both are very important to me.

The seeds of songs start quietly. There is an honesty that I have in conversation with myself, in song, that is an important part of finding something true.

Then I almost always take them to other players, who bring the full spectrum of sound to the song and make it come to life. I love to see and feel what other musicians bring to the music.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I think for me, music is about community and connecting - even when it’s a very lonesome exercise, in listening or in crafting.

What we do is about holding space for people to feel.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

In all ways and more than I can possibly say. It’s been my greatest companion and teacher.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

If I’m quite honest I’m only really delving into the science of sound at this point in my life.

It’s exquisite and fascinating and so wonderful that all this magic can be explained - making it even more magical - but it has not been within my framework of understanding music up until very recently. So perhaps I’ll have to answer this question at a later stage.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Perhaps it’s not so different. I’m not sure.

I suppose one of the meaningful things about performing for me, is sharing something that doesn’t have to be polite, or contained, or easily explained. A way of expressing that which falls outside of the standards of socially acceptable behaviour. A chance to be witnessed, and hopefully offer the same to others, in a new and more complex way.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our eardrums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it is able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

Not at this moment - but I am very much in awe of it.