Due for release 31st July 2026 via Communion
CD / Std Cream LP / Ltd Dinked Edition No. 407
Dinked Exclusives:
- Cream & Black marble effect vinyl
- Alternative artwork oversleeve
- Signed & hand-numbered edition
- A6 24 page bonus zine
- Limited pressing of 500
For nearly two decades, Lucia has been carving out her place as an artist in the UK indie scene. Her latest record, Picking Petals, is the culmination of that hard graft and bold vision — an album rooted in her Scottish upbringing and shaped by the creative community she has built around her in Glasgow and beyond, featuring collaborations with Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHES and Abigail Morris of The Last Dinner Party.
Lucia’s debut, Burning Castles, was streamlined and statuesque, built on metronomic beats and synth-led pop. The intention behind Picking Petals sharpened into focus in the face of this. This time, it was crucial to capture the essence of Lucia & The Best Boys’ live shows— loud and electric. In recent years, Fairfull has shared bills with a new wave of women in alternative music: joining Wolf Alice on their Blue Weekend tour in 2022 and, more recently, opening for the aforementioned The Last Dinner Party. In summer 2024, she toured alongside fellow Scottish icon Shirley Manson on the UK and European leg of Garbage’s live shows.
The Scottish synchronicity feels poignant. This rich and historical landscape is where Picking Petals came to be, Lucia heading north to write in weather-beaten bothies alongside the band or in solitude. Likewise, the songwriter was insistent that acclaimed alt-pop producer Yves Rothman experience her stomping ground rather than sun-drenched LA, hunkering down in Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studios, a Glasgow townhouse transformed into a citadel of sound. For some people, Picking Petals will be a coming-of-age album. For Lucia & The Best Boys, it’s just coming home.
Most musicians face a crossroads at some point in their careers. Lucia Fairfull faced hers before she was even a teenager. Up until then, afternoons were spent pirouetting and pliéing through dance school. Music moved through her body. Performances were physical and instinctive. But when she was 11, a car accident left her with a broken leg, and her dancing stopped abruptly. Life slowed. School fell away for a year. In the quiet of a small Scottish village, she recovered at home as her family rallied around her.
With long stretches of time to herself, she noticed her mum’s old guitar propped up in the house. She began to play. The accident didn’t end her relationship with music; it turned it inward. The shift to songwriter didn’t come easily, though. Her confidence was shaken, and she developed debilitating stage fright. “I’d do school shows, and I would pass out,” she admits. Still, the pull of making music around other people was strong. A few years on, Fairfull found herself in the car with her parents, heading to Glasgow, determined to face the fear head-on. “My dad said, ‘If you’re gonna busk, you have to do it every weekend, like it’s a job.’”
Fairfull took that advice seriously. For nearly two decades, she has applied the same mentality to carving out her place as an artist in the UK indie scene. Her latest record, Picking Petals, is the culmination of that hard graft and bold vision — an album rooted in her Scottish upbringing and shaped by the creative community she has built around her in Glasgow and beyond.
But first came the city circuit. With Buchanan and Sauchiehall Street as her formative stages, she plucked at her acoustic guitar and learned to perform in public. At 16, she was recording with Echo and the Bunnymen’s Gordy Goudie after her guitar teacher shared a few of her songs. Goudie recognised not just the talent, but the hunger behind it. “I didn’t want to do anything else when I was younger,” she insists.
Propelled by that early endorsement, Fairfull assembled a line-up of collaborators to form Lucia & The Best Boys (a nod to one of her early solo EPs, Best Boy), and the scale of her performances quickly accelerated. She found herself opening for The Bay City Rollers at Barrowlands Ballroom when she was just 17 — a room her grandparents once danced in together — before supporting The Big Moon at Glasgow’s infamous King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.
Just as Lucia & The Best Boys’ early showcases were gathering momentum, the pandemic brought tours to a halt and closed live venues across the UK. Suddenly, songs once written for sweaty throngs and flailing arms had to be reconsidered in isolation. Her debut, Burning Castles, was streamlined and statuesque, built on metronomic beats and synth-led pop. Even so, Fairfull was conscious of its restless energy, wrestling with how to capture such a defining decade. “That first album was written between the time I was 22 until I was 25,” she says. “It was hard to squeeze in four years of my life where I’d probably been four different versions of myself.”
Still, the instinct to keep moving — even slowly — remained. “I knew I had to find a way through this,” she says. “I needed to adapt.” The intention behind sophomore record, Picking Petals, sharpened into focus. This time, it was crucial to capture the essence of Lucia & The Best Boys’ live shows— loud and electric. “We were robbed of that opportunity last time,” she says, thinking back to the debut. Fairfull has long spoken of Stevie Nicks as a guiding presence in her musical life. On Picking Petals, she steps more decisively into her own space — one shaped by a lineage of performers who command the stage without apology.
In recent years, Fairfull has shared bills with a new wave of women embodying that legacy in real time: joining Wolf Alice on their Blue Weekend tour in 2022 and, more recently, opening for folkloric fivesome, The Last Dinner Party. In summer 2024, she toured alongside fellow Scottish icon Shirley Manson on the UK and European leg of Garbage’s live shows. The cross-generational symmetry isn’t lost on her. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as seen as I did with Shirley. We see each other in ourselves.”
The Scottish synchronicity feels poignant. This rich and historical landscape is where we find Fairfull starting work on Picking Petals, heading north to write in weather-beaten bothies alongside the band or in solitude. Likewise, the songwriter was insistent that acclaimed alt-pop producer Yves Rothman experience her stomping ground rather than sundrenched LA, hunkering down in Mogwai’s Castle of Doom studios, a Glasgow townhouse transformed into a citadel of sound.
That sense of flux carried into the songwriting process. The pressure to perform was palpable. In the past, Fairfull struggled to find her clan, feeling torn between her vision and the demands and expectations of others. “I couldn't get people to understand fully what it was that I was trying to make, or find my place in the industry,” she explains. As soon as she entered the space, though, those homegrown stories flowed as freely as Robert Burns’ Bruar stream.
“I went into the room, and I was really nervous thinking, ‘What if my creative brain isn’t switched on?’” she says, recalling her first encounter with Rothman at the city studio. She wrings her tattooed hands before placing palms on the table. Her fingers spell out the word, ‘SHOWGIRL’. She needn’t have worried. “Within two days, we’d written the opening track on the album.”
‘Back Inside My Heart’ is a bold, synth-fuelled, fist-pumping anthem, sitting effortlessly alongside lead single ‘Lonely Girl', a three-minute snapshot of longing and growth. Guest vocalist on the track, Lauren Mayberry, who also moved from the villages of Stirlingshire to global stages, shares in that narrative. As the former CHVRCHES frontperson sings, “They say you’ll need to move away to live your dreams…Where I thrive is where I am / Yeah, I don’t need to leave.”
Both women know what it is to shapeshift and present as performers, and as their Celtic vowels connect, a deep-rooted affinity is clear. A shared space of belonging. “When CHVRCHES first came about. I worked at Forever 21. ‘The Mother, We Share’ was on the store playlist every day, and I was like, 'She's singing in a Scottish accent!’”
For Fairfull, ‘Lonely Girl’ is an ode to seeking out that community, those formative friendships that help you navigate life. “You're going through so many different things, and the one thing that you need is community. I want people not to feel alone. When younger girls come to gigs, they look at you, and they think, 'Oh, she's this, and she's that,’” she says, acutely aware that others might see a more polished, pop-produced ensemble. But gazing out of the bay window of her stone tenement flat in Glasgow’s West End, Fairfull is still that lonely girl from Drymen desperate to start living. "Hen, you need to know that I was there as well!"
The struggle is documented vividly in the trad-leaning ‘You Look Like Somebody In Love’ which dances with bothy bar violins, regret and longing, as Fairfull sings, “Between all the pictures / I took of sunsets / are ones I took of you / I’ve been in so deep / The hill is steep / But I’ll climb it for the view.” While ‘Better For The Worse’ carries echoes of Florence and the Machine’s ‘Dog Days’, with sparkling octave mandolin that finds our brooding balladeer stomping through rainy city streets, hoping for redemption.
Heartfelt connections weave through the rest of the record like a homespun friendship bracelet. In the baroque pop-infused ‘Big Romance’, The Last Dinner Party frontwoman Abigail Morris appears on vocal duties, fitting for a track that the Brit Award winner was adamant should make the record. “She's the one who pushed me to keep going with that song. I started writing that when I was 22. It's lived through so many different lives.”
Like Morris’s steadfast belief, the friends have been a constant, on stage and off. Before she was in The Last Dinner Party, Morris played a few Scottish dates on keyboards for Lucia & The Best Boys, and that’s a precious synergy as Fairfull explains. “Being able to share these experiences with other women who understand where you're at, what you're doing, it's really empowering.”
This idea of persistence appears again in title track ‘Picking Petals’, a song that yearns for acceptance with Haim sister-style staccato delivery in the marching middle eight and a soaring solo to match. Fairfull paints a picture of a wilting thistle turning black, unfurling the rawer parts of herself as she comes out the other side of a decade of self-discovery. “I've always been the songwriter, but this process opened up a heartwarming universe where it felt safe to lay out the darker and more playful pieces of myself.”
Because from the moment Fairfull hit that crossroads, put down her dance shoes, and tentatively picked up the guitar, the seeds were sown for the making of this album. She’s sure of it. “I wasn't meant to do anything else. It would have happened one way or another.” For some people, Picking Petals will be a coming-of-age album. For Lucia & The Best Boys, it’s just coming home.
Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Back Inside My Heart
2. Lonely Girl
3. Wolf Cry
4. Better For The Worse
5. You Look Like Somebody In Love
Side B
6. Picking Petals
7. Pleasure And A Prayer
8. Forgot The Arrow
9. Big Romance
10. Ephemeral