Holding Absence drop hyperpop-inspired single ‘Lucid Love’ with an anime video, previewing their fourth album ‘Modern Life Is Lonely,’ out August 28
Holding Absence released “Lucid Love” on June 19, 2026, and it is not what anyone was expecting. The Cardiff post-hardcore outfit, known for their emotionally dense rock sound, have delivered a hyperpop-inspired single that sits well outside the sonic territory of their previous three albums, and they have paired it with an anime-style music video that commits fully to the shift in aesthetic. Both the track and the visual are previews of Modern Life Is Lonely, their fourth studio album, due August 28.
The announcement arrives as Holding Absence have spent the past year steadily building toward this moment. The band’s third album, The Greatest Mistake of My Life, released in 2022, established them as one of the most emotionally rigorous bands in British rock, earning significant critical praise and a devoted fanbase that followed them across increasingly ambitious live runs. The jump to hyperpop-influenced production on “Lucid Love” is the kind of genre pivot that will inevitably generate conversation. It is also, on the evidence of the track itself, the kind of pivot that has clearly been made with intention rather than desperation.
What ‘Lucid Love’ Sounds Like and Why It Works
“Lucid Love” opens in territory that is recognizably Holding Absence and then moves into something else. The emotional directness that has always defined frontman Lucas Woodland’s songwriting is present throughout, but the production frame around it is completely different: bright, accelerated, and built from the hyperpop vocabulary of pitched-up vocals, processed textures, and the kind of maximalist pop energy that sits closer to 100 gecs than to the band’s rock touchstones. It should feel like a mismatch. It does not.
The accompanying anime video extends the track’s visual identity in a way that makes thematic sense. Anime’s tradition of expressing extreme emotional states through heightened stylization maps directly onto what “Lucid Love” is doing sonically. The decision to commission an anime video rather than a conventional live performance or narrative clip signals that Holding Absence understood exactly what register the song was operating in and built the entire creative package to match.
The Album, the Tour, and the Larger Picture
Modern Life Is Lonely is due August 28 and follows a creative period that has seen Holding Absence expand their audience significantly through touring and festival appearances. The band will support Enter Shikari on their European arena run later this year, with dates covering Hamburg, Munich, Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Brussels, Tilburg, Nottingham, Cardiff, Hull, Glasgow, Manchester, and two nights at Alexandra Palace in London on November 20 and 21. That tour positions Holding Absence in front of one of the largest audiences they will have played to, arriving within weeks of Modern Life Is Lonely’s release.
Enter Shikari and Holding Absence represent complementary rather than identical visions of what British rock can do at scale. Both bands have pushed at the genre’s edges, incorporating electronic production and non-traditional song structures without losing the emotional core that makes rock music connect with people rather than just impress them. The co-bill makes sense, and it will give Modern Life Is Lonely a promotional context that matches the ambition of a record that begins with a hyperpop single and an anime video.
For a band whose previous work earned its reputation through a very specific kind of emotional weight, “Lucid Love” is a statement of creative freedom. It does not sound like a band abandoning what made them, but rather one interrogating the full range of where their instincts can take them. August 28 will tell the full story. This single makes a persuasive opening argument.
