I feel like this is one of those EPs I’ve watched being built before my eyes. I’ve been a fan of Lucky since stumbling across Lady Beetle last year. I attended her first headline tour and I’ve been avidly listening to each new single as it’s released, so it’s exciting to see Biting Heels is finally here. Yet it’s also a difficult one for me to review as so much of it is now so familiar.
My first take from listening to the collection of tracks as whole EP is how rocky the sound is. Lucky has always tried to have those indie rock guitars as a driving force of her songs and it’s great to see she’s fully leaned into this on Biting Heels, and tracks such as Hide and Seek and Adored really show this off well.
Lucky has an astute understanding of what works well with her voice and this results in a lovely interplay between the vocals, powerful drums and hazy guitars across the EP, allowing for this big sound but not at the expense of a clear vocal line. Combined with this is some excellent song writing, full of big choruses and repeated motifs. These are tracks that are screaming to be performed live – which, let’s be honest, is where this style of music thrives or dies.
Despite being a musically loud album, lyrically it’s full of quiet yearning: about the future, the loss of potential love, or reckoning with who she is becoming as a person. It’s not ‘in your face’ storytelling, you have to listen to the parts between those catchy choruses to really hear the messaging on each track, creating a record that can be enjoyed at many levels.
Speaking on Biting Heels, Lucky says: “Although ‘Biting Heels’ is my debut, it feels like a long time coming. Finally putting out a body of work that I’ve poured everything into, something that feels truly meaningful, it marks an important moment for me. An official introduction to the world. To me the project feels quite broad, dipping into my different sonic inspirations and directions. I tried to tip my hat to all of them whilst still leaving room for whatever I do next.
‘Biting Heels’, the title track, and subsequent EP title kind of came out of nowhere. Working on the song reminded me of when I first started writing music, with an acoustic guitar at the core. It quickly became the heart of the EP, centring much of the lyrical content across the record. Exploring comfort zones, the act of pushing beyond them, and trusting that you’ll land somewhere new and exciting.”