Gang Of Four have released the video for “LUCKY” from their latest Complicit EP. The “Lucky” video features Nova Twins‘ Amy Love, who provides backing vocals on many of the tracks on the forthcoming album.
Arriving ahead of a new Gang of Four studio album due for release in September 2018, Complicit is co-produced by the band’s Andy Gill, alongside Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode) and Ross Orton (M.I.A., Arctic Monkeys). From a band recently haled as a touchstone for musicians as diverse as St Vincent, Frank Ocean, James Murphy and Pharrell Williams, the EP also includes the single “Ivanka (Things You Can’t Have)” and has already caused a stir with artwork that captions the President’s daughter with a single Russian word, замешанная, meaning “complicit.”
The video itself was shot in a deliberately small space with just two Dedo lights that reflect off the walls to achieve the gritty neo-realist feel of 50’s Italian films. Frontman Gaoler comes across as an Homme Fatale gangster, while Gill comes across as, well, just a gangster.
“Lucky” also offers a commentary that is political and metaphysical. Gill says: “‘Lucky’ is about how luck defines more than we imagine. You might think of the words from Macbeth concerning life being an hour upon the stage where the walking shadow struts and frets but can change nothing. A parallel idea is that luck may have as much impact on the course of a life than anything an individual does. As in Sartre’s ‘les jeux sont faits’, action, truth, morality will always play second fiddle to luck.”
“Lucky” identifies itself as a Gang of Four track with Gill’s serrated guitar, beneath frontman Gaoler’s alternately piteous and self-aggrandising protagonist, freighted by a taut groove from Thomas McNiece and Tobias Humble’s rhythm section.