Maybe the best place to start talking about Kissing Luck Goodbye is at the end of the latest album from ADULT. Just when you think “Destroyers” is done, an electronic swoosh gives way to what sounds like traffic noise. Then, Nicola Kuperus’ voice reappears, singing, “We pay the price for those in power/Exploiting you, exploiting me/Consuming you, consuming me.”
I’ve had an advance copy of Kissing Luck Goodbye for a good minute and have now listened to it enough times to be somewhat haunted by the album’s finale. Listening to “Destroyers,” I think about how we’re literally paying the price for those in power every time we go to a store or restaurant and notice how things are ever-so-slightly more expensive than they were the week prior. We are being exploited, by politicians, by Big Tech, by virtually every corporate entity. We know this and, yet, it seems like there’s no way to stop it.
Absolutely, this weird, late capitalist hellscape is consuming all of us. When I do stop doomscrolling long enough to go outside, the evidence is there. Close to a year after the I.C.E. siege of Los Angeles, protesters still gather in front of the detention center regularly and signs remain in storefront windows as an attempt to ward off the federal goons. Street art and graffiti of the Fuck Trump variety has proliferated, the specific content and form these messages take morph with every new, awful thing he does. Politics pepper both the conversations I have and the ones I overhear nearly every day. The only way someone could argue that everything is fine right now is if they’re walking through the world with a blindfold and earplugs.
Life in L.A. is tense – I can only assume that’s the case in much of the United States – and there are very few artists who are as good as translating tension into music as ADULT. It’s the thing that’s kept me listening to the Detroit duo since I first heard “Hand to Phone” somewhere around the turn of the millennium. Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller make music that can mimic the feeling of nervous shaking and anxious thoughts. On Kissing Luck Goodbye, they do that often, distilling the past year into an album that captures the frustration of being a thoughtful person ensnared in a timeline that has managed to become both truly stupid and truly evil. The tension is thick throughout Kissing Luck Goodbye, but it’s most palpable on “R U 4 $ale” and “No One Is Coming.”
“R U 4 $ale” is an example of how much can be said with relatively few lyrics. Repeated lines like “are you for sale?” and “the chaos is what they want” essentially tell the story of how we got here, of rampant corruption and flood-the-zone tactics that have left the general public unable to discern between fact and fiction, human and bot. “No One Is Coming” is a frenetic synth-punk jam centered around the refrain “no one is coming to your rescue,” a powerful statement when it seems like many people are willing to shrug and say, “well, what can we do?” That these two songs, both of which were released prior to the full-length album, are placed next to each other on the album acts as a cause-and-effect statement.
Kissing Luck Goodbye is a dark ride, but there are glimmers of hope throughout it, like when Kuperus sings “power is temporary” on “No Song.” And, even though there’s a lot of anger built into the album, there’s also catharsis, particularly in “Freaks,” where a big warehouse party thump of a drum intertwines with game show noises and cut-up snippets of the words “weirdos” and “freaks.” This is an album that’s full of punk rage and it feels pretty good to release it, even if the mosh pit is just you at home alone dancing into a sofa while singing along to “So Unpleasant.”
ADULT. may have released the most resonant album of 2026 with Kissing Luck Goodbye. Even if you aren’t familiar with the band, you might be familiar with the feelings that they convey. Going back to “Destroyers,” at the tail end of the song, Kuperus wails “sick sick sick,” a repeated word that I know I’ve thought many times while reading/watching the news. From the mass incarcerations here to the bombing of a school in Iran, it’s all sickening. But, it’s the last line that gets me. Kuperus sings, “I will eat your hate,” her voice growing weary as the song fades away. Resistance is exhausting, but, if we don’t do it, who will?
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to Beatique, March 2026 featuring music from Grrrl Gang, Peaches, Charli xcx, The Smiths and more.
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