09 February 2023 - 0 Comments

Lucky Boy^ is the musical project of Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, a musician and songwriter from Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland).

Lucky Boy^ composes cozy bedroom pop that's mindful, tender and relaxed. Kavanagh-Vincent is prolific songwriter, having shared over 30 solo releases between 2018-2021. More recently Kavanagh-Vincent can be found performing in the indie rock outfit Treenurse, dream pop group Phoebe Rings, and playing guitar as a part of Princess Chelsea's live band (who recently toured Aotearoa, Europe and the United Kingdom, stopping off for a recording sesh at Abbey Road Studios).

Today Lucky Boy^ shares Burned Out w. Phoebe Rings, a tender track based on soft synth sounds about feeling frayed at the edges.

Lucky Boy^'s Burned Out w. Phoebe Rings is the first single from a new EP of collaborative songs that he will release before the end of 2023. He explains that the collaborations were a way of enjoying songwriting again, after a “creative dry spell - brought on by taking myself a little too seriously.”

The writers block followed a huge initial out pour between 2018 and 2020: “I had a lot of fun recording about 30 different releases ranging from singles to EP's to Albums (all done rather quickly and haphazardly), but the moment I decided to do something a little more substantial I froze.I know a tonne of very talented and lovely humans and the least that could come from writing a song with any of them is a fun, low stress afternoon or two. If I record something with ideas from someone else I am much more likely to be happy with the end result. My goal with all of the collaborative songs was to get as close to 50/50 on the input as possible, I didn't want the end result to be my song ‘featuring’ someone else but instead a song that could have started with either one of us and progressed to a fully fledged piece.”

With a Casio keyboard shuffle and cozy keys the new single Burned Out w. Phoebe Rings invites the listener along on a lo-fi daydream. “Lyrically it's a song I could resonate with throughout many points in the last 5 or so years. Just over working and having too much on your plate - doing that for way too long is the general sentiment” says Kavanagh-Vincent.

“I am a huge fan of Crystal Choi's (Phoebe Rings) harmony and melody writing so I knew that she would bring a solid harmonic foundation. We are also both big synth fans which led to the spacey Juno sound that holds down the song. I think I mostly wanted night time kind of sounds so everything is done through that lens.”

Burned Out w. Phoebe Rings is accompanied by music with a music video directed by Abigail Egden (and made with support from NZ On Air Music). The clip shows Choi and Lucky Boy^ taking an early morning drive through the city streets of Tāmaki Makaurau, when the sky is a mix of deep purples and warm yellows.

Reflecting on the track Kavanagh-Vincent notes “it has taken far longer to finish than I would have originally envisioned, and I think i would expect after a year and a half to feel different and be able to look back on the theme of the song with some amount of having moved on, but I am finding that a lot of the theme is still relevant to how I feel now.”

“Overall I am very pleased, Crystal was the first person I contacted about doing the collab EP and I think the process of working through writing a song with her made me far more confident going into some of the other sessions.”

STREAM BURNED OUT W. PHOEBE RINGS

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Photo Credit: Nicola Luey

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