HOLDING ABSENCE UNVEIL NEW SONG
Photo: Bethan Miller
South Wales trio Holding Absence has officially unveiled their new single, ‘Modern Life Is Lonely.’ Serving as the compelling title track for their highly anticipated fourth studio album, the release marks a significant milestone as their debut offering through new label partner Sumerian Records, ahead of the full album's arrival on September 18th.
Elaborating on the track's unexpected release, vocalist Lucas Woodland shares, “After the release of our album was pushed back a few weeks, we knew we had to offer something special to our fans to tide them over until the new release day... And what better song to do that than the title track! Modern Life Is Lonely - the song - is steeped in Lofi, whilst still being able to juxtapose itself against one of the heaviest moments in our discography. We're hoping this'll get people even more excited for the whole record to drop in just under a month!”
At a time in society when physical and digital connection appears to be at its absolute peak, yet the individuals within it feel more isolated and stranded than ever before, the art being produced must actively reflect reality rather than mere possibility. For Lucas Woodland, such a creative call to arms lined up seamlessly with the position that he and Holding Absence found themselves in. With their fourth full-length offering, the group has constructed a body of work that speaks directly and unapologetically to the universal experience of isolation in 2026.
Serving as an intentional reference, and in many ways a modern update on the state of human existence, to Blur’s classic 1993 record ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’, ‘Modern Life Is Lonely’ strives to capture the essence of what it truly means to exist within a moment in time that is as complex as it is heart-wrenchingly captive. It offers an introspective look at the external assets, technological shifts, and daily habits that have become embedded in our everyday lives, often against our will or completely under our noses. The track expertly distills the bizarre sensation of being completely interconnected yet utterly desolate. Less concerned with being timeless and far more focused on being timely, the record strives to offer listeners solace just as much as it seeks to document how extraordinarily bizarre modern life has become.
“This album was really the first time that I thought, ‘Let’s speak about the world that I live in, rather than the world that I am,” Lucas comments. “It’s no longer like a therapy class; a bunch of strangers are no longer turning up to Existentials Anonymous. In theory, everyone knows me now; they’ve heard my journey, but I’m still struggling in this big, bad world. It doesn’t matter how much enlightenment you can find within yourself; the world is still a scary place right now.”
For Lucas, this album represents a massive shift in creative perspective, especially considering just how much of his personal inner world has been poured into Holding Absence over the last decade. Through their acclaimed trilogy of albums—2019’s self-titled debut ‘Holding Absence’, 2021’s ‘The Greatest Mistake Of My Life’, and 2023’s ‘The Noble Art Of Self Destruction’—the band managed to travel the globe, share stages with their biggest heroes, and carve out a profound legacy built on a very specific strain of cathartic emotion. However, in officially bringing the curtain down on that defining trilogy, it became imperative for the group to channel their creative energy from an entirely different source.
Rather than processing these overwhelming external feelings solely through himself, Woodland and the band set out to craft a conceptual individual who could physically embody these modern experiences. Enter Y4-BBO, who functions as both a mascot for the band and a tangible manifestation of the overwhelming technological confusion that defines this era. His existence allows the record to carry an intricate dual concept, with his personal story artfully enveloped within these expansive tracks. Showcasing an incredible dedication to physical detail, his distinct helmet seen on the album's cover art was custom-built by the exact same prop team responsible for creating the iconic Cybermen in Doctor Who.
Much of this conceptual evolution extends directly into how Holding Absence sounds on this record as well. In stepping back to re-evaluate the core identity of the group, the band recognized that their music was fundamentally less about sheer noise and far more about expressive language. While an infinite number of sonic avenues lay before them, they previously lacked the time or space to fully utilize them. Refusing to walk down the well-worn path of their past releases, Lucas—alongside guitarist Scott Carey and bassist Benjamin Elliot—strived to showcase just how vibrant, expansive, and viscerally otherworldly their sound could truly become.
By pulling rich influence from the chaotic boldness of hyper-pop and the ethereal tranquility of lo-fi, all while maintaining a heavy pulse of post-hardcore grit at their core, the band drew inspiration from boundary-destroying contemporaries like Julia Wolf and Paledusk. The resulting soundscapes are as adventurous as they are musically emphatic. Instead of adhering strictly to standard linear song structures, the band spent countless hours chopping up and manipulating different track elements, slowing down and re-verbing passages just as frequently as speeding them up and smashing them together. Soft, delicate textures and pattering synthesizer rhythms clash gleefully against euphoric bursts of kinetic energy, resulting in a listening experience that feels both comfortably familiar and unfathomably fresh.
With acclaimed producer Daniel Braunstein at the helm—marking the very first time he has produced a British band—the collaboration represents two dominant forces in the alternative scene stepping outside their comfort zones to craft something completely unexpected. In an era where alternative music is constantly being consumed, processed, and manipulated by algorithms, remembering what it means to dig deeper into the unknown has never been more crucial for the genre.
“We pushed ourselves in ways that we’d never had before, while maintaining what that language of Holding Absence is. We’ll be introducing people to new sounds, and that’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. But also, I think everything should inspire something, and with this record, as pretty famous victims of what AI is capable of, I wanted to do shit that no AI idiot would ever try and do, or even understand how to do. We’re at a new frontier where things are changing very fast, and we don’t know what this horrible sort of change entails for us. But where we are right now is essentially at a point of instinctive rebellion against that, and I’m intrigued about what comes next with that.”
This daring mindset naturally bled into the thematic and lyrical directions that Lucas chose to explore throughout the writing process. In attempting to look beyond the immediate thoughts inside his head and heart, he fixed his gaze upward toward the skies, contemplating the unequivocal vastness and infinite mystery of space. The stars above remain breathtakingly beautiful yet intensely daunting, making the age-old question of whether something greater exists out there feel drenched in equal parts wonder and terror. This inherent duality of human existence—a continuous pendulum swinging between distinct yet critical emotional states—heavily informed the album's dynamic balance between overwhelming hopelessness and lingering optimism.
Representing the longest production cycle of the band's career, requiring two and a half years of continuous writing, demoing, and meticulous sonic crafting, the extended timeline allowed Lucas the space to pinpoint every nuance of existing in this pivotal historical moment.
“Over the last two and a half years, I’ve gone through so much internally in regards to hopelessness, loneliness and fear of failure, and I think this album really is like a resistance to that. There’s an awareness of self in here now. It’s almost cynical, but it is also realistic. I say this every time, but I truly mean it. This album could have just not happened. But I have such a deep yearning for this life and this art form of storytelling that I have to do it. I just can’t not.”
To reach a decade as a band while continuing to honor and respond to that underlying drive to keep searching is no small feat, but it is precisely what cements Holding Absence as a truly singular force in modern alternative music. With ‘Modern Life Is Lonely,’ the group has fearlessly expanded upon everything they once were, delivering a creative statement that is as undeniable as it is unstoppable.
“I think that we are now in the arc in our career where we could fall the hell off or we could cling on for dear life, and sort of dwindle and fade away,” Lucas muses in conclusion. “Yet, I think we’ve done neither of those things. I think that we’ve been as rebellious as we’ve been respectful of our band, and we’ve managed to hold that line. I’m not a kid anymore, and I don’t want just to be doing the same stuff over and over again. So, it’s really special to me that we’ve nailed something very unique that is bigger than our band. Bigger than all of us.”
Modern Life Is Lonely
Tracklisting
1) Reanimate
2) Reflection
3) Heaven
4) Modern Life Is Lonely
5) Take Me With You
6) shells_like_us.int
7) Whisper Of A Dream
8) Lucid Love
9) Scorched Earth
10) lullaby.int
11) Kyoto Snow
