9 July 2026 – Maripool Crosses Into 'Rotten Luck' With Lisbon In The Rearview

<a href="/tags/maripool">Maripool</a>, the project of UK-based singer-songwriter Natacha Simões, is preparing the debut album <i>Rotten Luck</i> for August 2026, and the new video track 'Crossing' gives the record a beautifully specific emotional map.

The album was written during a month-long residency in Lisbon in January 2025, in conditions that sound like either an artist's dream or a landlord's confession: a decaying fisherman's building across the river, a sparse room, a broken window, dripping ceilings and no Wi-Fi. Terrible for emails, probably excellent for songwriting. Sometimes the internet disappearing is the universe's rudest way of saying please finish the chorus.

'Crossing' draws from the bridge between Lisbon and Almada, and the song reflects on childhood, family and the warm blur of memory connected to travelling across that route. That image gives the track its emotional centre.

Bridges are obvious metaphors, but they remain useful because life keeps rudely requiring us to cross things: countries, versions of ourselves, old relationships, childhood memories, the gap between what we thought we were and what we actually became.

Maripool seems to approach that territory with a DIY sensibility that keeps the work from becoming too precious. The album was later recorded in South London with a live band, allowing loosely formed songs to evolve in the studio rather than arriving fully laminated. That gives <i>Rotten Luck</i> the promise of immediacy, the feeling that songs were allowed to discover themselves under pressure.

The wider visual world also matters, with Simões creating the artwork and working closely with family and friends. That handmade element strengthens the music's sense of personal geography. 'Crossing' is not just a song about place. It is about how places store versions of us, then hand them back years later when we least expect it. Very rude of them, really. But useful for art.