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The LP was written during a month-long residency in Lisbon in January 2025. Simões occupied a fisherman’s building across the river from the city, with a broken window, dripping ceilings and no internet connection. The enforced stillness shaped work that deals with displacement, memory, and the friction between past and present selves. “The process of reconnecting with a part of myself that never fully left… confronting who I am when everything external falls apart,” says Simões, who was born in the Portuguese capital but now calls London home.
While earlier Maripool releases were largely constructed alone, Rotten Luck is the result of a more collaborative approach. Simões brought her live band into a South London studio with producer Joseph Futak (Tapir!, Piglet), allowing loosely sketched songs to take shape through improvisation. The opener “Glue” began with a drum-machine pattern that Simões admits she “loved too much,” later challenging her drummer to recreate something she felt was “humanly impossible.”
The record pulls
explicitly from the geography of Lisbon. “Crossing”, inspired by the
bridge between Lisbon and Almada, draws on childhood memory: “my
favourite memories as a kid… whenever I crossed that bridge with my
parents on a hot summer day.” That nostalgic undertow resurfaces in the
instrumental “Lucky Stars In The Sky”, which closes with audio lifted
from a 1990s VHS home video of Simões at the beach with her parents. Archival recordings are embedded into
the music.
Simões created the album’s artwork herself and worked closely with her sister Carina Simões and friends on the visual elements, preserving the DIY sensibility that has accompanied Maripool since the 2021 single “Blindness”, which was followed by previous EPs It All Comes At Once and a day that feels like nothing at all.
Rotten Luck artwork
English (US) · 