Between echo and exhale: an interview with Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys

Ahead of their much-anticipated show at A38 Hajó on July 16, Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys open up about the emotional landscapes of their music, the alchemy of collaboration, and the delicate dance between control and chaos. In this intimate conversation, Lucy reflects on the power of voice notes, the ghosts of Berlin, and the ephemeral magic of live performance—revealing how home, noise, and vulnerability shape their haunting sonic world.

„Reaching” feels like a moment suspended between frustration and tenderness—like a hand stretched out but not quite held. Could you tell us where that song came from emotionally, and whether it stands alone or points toward a new chapter?

That’s a lovely interpretation and really captures the feeling and experience. I think a lot of my music happens in that stretching space—trying for connection, even if it’s through a shared experience of isolation. So in that way, it’s quite in line with what I’ve written and what’s still to come. Musically, too, I think it follows the trench I’ve been digging.

In A Human Home, you invited the voices of friends into the songwriting process—messages, voice notes, fragments of real life. What did that process teach you about intimacy and authorship?

It feels like a big and beautiful question—one I could ramble on about for a while. Just before COVID, I wanted to make something entirely on my own, without any external influence, to see what my voice might be. Then the pandemic hit, and the absence of presence was so pronounced that it no longer felt like an interesting or enlightening process. It seemed naive, even absurd.
I loved the idea of starting from another’s imprint. I wanted to acknowledge—and sort of celebrate—the impossibility of complete independence or originality. We’re grown, marked, and changed by all the things: people, weather patterns, places. And we leave our own marks everywhere we go. The pandemic made that so apparent. I wanted to feel the effect of my friends in my songs.
It also became a strangely intimate way to spend time with them.
From an authorship perspective, it’s interesting. Technically, I’m registered as the songwriter, but they are absolutely the seeds—and sometimes quite clear collaborators. If music weren’t monetised, if we didn’t live in a capitalist system, I think we’d think about authorship very differently.

There’s a beautiful tension in your work between control and chaos—between the whispered and the screamed. What does that balance mean to you in the studio, and how do you navigate it live on stage?

In the studio, I have a hard time letting go. On stage, I struggle to reign it in.
I’m tempted in the studio to make things sound ‘nice’ and be ‘right,’ and on stage, I want to give it all away—to draw everyone in. Both require a kind of trust that the audience will be patient and perceptive enough to follow the arc and look beyond the technical.
The studio is tricky because you’re playing for an imagined audience, and that audience can become very critical in my mind. On stage, there’s an immediate energetic response you can feel and work with. And there’s something about the ephemeral nature of performance that makes it easier to let go.
Still, I do try to find a balance, because I think music—like many things—makes sense and comes to life through contrast.

„Home” is a recurring idea in your recent work—sometimes it feels like a place, sometimes a body, sometimes a memory. What does „home” mean to you now, especially as artists constantly in motion?

I think it’s something we all, more or less consciously, contemplate throughout our lives. Moving to Berlin really brought the question into focus, and it remains a kind of puzzle.
Being with my band on tour has come to feel like home. There’s a real closeness between us—both literally and figuratively—and a clarity about what needs to happen in a day. And those days are very full. Both of those things feel like antidotes to the existential holes that too much time in one place can bring.
Maybe I’ve become a little calmer about the idea that “home” is a complex concept—and I try to rest in the moments when the feeling of it arises.

As a band, you often explore the physicality of emotion—through dynamics, distortion, breath. How does your body guide your writing and performing, and how has that changed over time?

I think at some point I slowly started to find some freedom in performance—but I realised that the music I was writing while sitting alone in my bedroom didn’t give me much space to move or play. So I started trying to push myself a bit.
Now I sometimes write standing up, in a space where I feel comfortable making noise. I still feel quite stifled, but it’s improving.
The voice is such a strange, specific, emotive instrument. I know it can be used in so many ways—and I really want to explore that—but it requires more courage than I anticipated.
The body, the way it moves, and the sounds it can make are all deeply shaped by society and culture, and it’s lovely to imagine messing with those norms.

The Lost Boys have grown from accompaniment into co-architects of a very specific sonic universe. How has your collaborative dynamic changed in recent years? What does trust look like in your creative circle?

It’s lovely—and fascinating, and moving—to watch and feel how another person influences a song sculpture. I think the longer you play together, the more you get to know each other’s language.
By now, everyone in the band has an embodied understanding of the sound world, which leaves a lot of room for play.
I’m the least knowledgeable musician in the band, and I’m happy about that. I trust them completely, and I want the songs to be translated and transformed.

Your live shows can feel like rituals—equal parts performance, exorcism, and communion. Do you view the stage as a space for healing, confrontation, or something else entirely?

I wish I could name it—but maybe it’s okay that I can’t.
I think it’s the space where I feel safest being the full, messy spectrum of human that I am—that we all are—and that’s a vital experience.
In my composed adult life, I find it very hard to truly express and connect.
It feels good to be in a non-sense, sentimental, sonic space—where the abstract and the intense can be explored and celebrated, communally.

You’ve often spoken of using music to process identity, memory, and desire. Are there any questions you’re still circling around as artists—things you return to again and again in your work? Or are there new questions?

I think they’re probably variations on the same question—and probably all orbiting around a fear of death, or something like it.
No—I’m sort of kidding. But also sort of not.

You’ve lived in Berlin for years now. How has the city—its pace, its noise, its ghosts—shaped your recent records and the way you think about sound and silence?

I think it’s almost impossible to articulate. I’ve had a lot of time and space here—time to think and write and worry about bills and the world and my tiny existence.
Whether that’s a good thing or not, I don’t know—but it’s what I wanted, and I’m currently involved in the experiment.
It’s not a quiet city. I often wonder what it would be like if we could measure the long-term impact of all that noise on the mind.
The ghosts aren’t exactly mine—but I live here, and in this world, so maybe they are. That’s a question I might not have asked if I’d stayed where I was.

Coming to A38 Ship—an industrial, floating space, interaction between water and city—how do you imagine this setting might interact with the show you’re bringing? Do certain venues change the emotional weight of the songs for you?

Definitely. I sort of love a black box, but it’s also a shame that that’s the most common space we play in.
An environment can drastically change the shape and feeling of a performance. I’m really curious about this show, and excited to have the chance to visit.
Your description is very evocative—it makes me believe our music will feel quite at home there.