HOTEL LUX – THE HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 28.11.25
Portsmouth based Hotel Lux are a political band. But not in a shouting and stomping way. The beauty is in their casually sung yet delicately written observations. They first stumbled into my periphery following their gig at Brighton’s Green Door Store on 17th February 2023.
It takes a lot for me to be captivated by a band. I’ve spent many evenings standing with sore feet feeling uninspired by the music in front of me, but Hotel Lux hit the spot.
They cover all bases. Self-reflective ballads, politics, romantic heartbreak and tales of self-critique.
Two years down the line from their Green Door Store show, I’m sat next to their frontman, Lewis Duffin, in the backstage room of The Hope & Ruin ahead of their gig at the venue that evening.
Heading backstage:
After finding him at The Mitre Tavern, in Baker Street, the mile long walk with Lewis to The Hope & Ruin was publish worthy in itself.
He told tales of an extortionate £27 chippy tea, a skinful in Bournemouth and a night drinking till 4:00am in the New Cross Inn, polished off by two of the band throwing up in the tour van. After much discussion about the WH Smith rebrand, we made it to The Hope & Ruin backstage area for a chit chat and a creamy pint.
“Backstage area” is a generous term, it was blatantly a converted gents toilet plastered with posters and band signatures.
The room was the kind of cool look that doesn’t need to be kitted out in leopard print with a chaise longue to top it off, it held its character in its unpolished edges. Kind of like Hotel Lux.
We plopped ourselves down on the comfy leather armchairs at the side of the room. To my delight Duffin opened a mini fridge revealing stacks upon stacks of Stella Artois.
“Want one mate?” he inquired with raised eyebrows, “or a water”, as though he’s symbolically required to provide a soft drink to counter. Though miserly in its alcohol percentage, it was lowered to 4.6% in 2021- Thatcher’s Britain, I cracked one open- out of politeness of course.
Picking up a bottle from beside him he begins decanting its content into his glass.
“It’s a pint of lime soda!” he says proudly whilst screwing the top back onto his half empty bottle of Smirnoff, fittingly labelled with a sellotaped piece of cardboard reading “Lewis’ vodka”.
Primed with beverages we were ready for a chat.
Hotel Lux kicked off in January 2023 with debut album ‘Hands Across The Creek’. A cracking start for the 5 piece, reaching No.13 in the Record Store Charts, making their return to the world of studio albums much anticipated.
With accounts of self-declared “second album syndrome” popping up across the band’s Instagram, it seemed the lyrics hadn’t come quite as naturally as the first-time round.
LD: “It was quite a difficult time writing it. It became very collaborative, all of us wrote bits on it whereas last time that wasn’t the case”
“I think I left the band three or four times over the process, it wasn’t as natural as the first album”.
“Max (guitar) and Sam (Keyboard and guitarist) have both written songs on this album because I was struggling with it”.
With first album ‘Hands Across The Creek’ being the gem it is, any offering from Lux would surely struggle to be quite as sparkly and shiny as its former. But to my ears, their latest offering ‘The Bitter Cup’ stands strong and ambitious even in the shadow of their previous work.
Amongst the various hits from ‘The Bitter Cup’ is ‘Song For John Healey’.
Musically, it sounds like it could be a sea shanty written by Irish pirates that studied English literature. It tells the true story of a man named John Healey who, after 15 years as a homeless alcoholic, became a master chess player whilst in prison for petty crimes. After reading his autobiography, ‘The Grass Arena’, Lewis decided to write a song about him.
LD: “I guess he was just a pisshead back in the day, but he completely changed his life around, it’s quite a beautiful story really”.
“I just stole the story, I feel quite privileged to tell it. He had quite a sad life and I know the book company he signed to mugged him off. So I guess he’s not living a great life, he’s just an old bloke. But at least he stopped drinking”.
“I write a lot about sorrow. I’m a pessimist I guess”.
RB: “You sing about reliance and dependence on alcohol throughout ‘The Fear’, is that written from personal experience?”
Like a naughty teenager drinking in their parents’ shed, he takes one last gulp from his pint of vodka lime soda before answering.
LD: “Yes, yeah it is”.
“When you play every night and your payment is beers and booze it’s quite easy to get involved with that. It is a bit of a struggle, we did like a month touring on the first album and that was just hard to do. A month, every day, getting hammered”.
Though he assured me the band’s consumption was “manageable”, booze seems central to the Hotel Lux lifestyle. Even their latest album cover depicts Lewis and his father with a pint.
With a caricatured image of father and son as the cover, I was intrigued to hear about Duffin’s interpretation and experiences of masculinity.
LD: “It’s been really interesting battling with it. My dad’s a builder, bit of a geezer you know?”
“So I’ve always been trying to balance that because I like my music, I sing and I like to have a little dance on stage”
“It’s a theme that comes up quite a lot in our music, I always saw my dad as my hero, like how do I be like that? But also, I’m not like that. I don’t know how to articulate it properly, but it’s a balance.
It’s a balance Duffin wrestles with throughout the Lux catalogue. Most obviously on ‘Old Timer’ on which he argues “I could be the ideal bloke, but I just ain’t built for it. I don’t want to be the ideal bloke, what does it mean anyway?”.
There is a plain authenticity to the band, it really doesn’t seem like they’re trying to play up to a brand image. Unless that were to be sipping pints, wearing V neck knitted sweaters and tucked in t-shirts.
LD: “I think we had a period where we took ourselves a bit too seriously. Initially we were trying to be too cool but then we thought, we’ll just be who we are and they can take who we are”.
Central to both Lux albums is politics, manifesting itself on ‘The Bitter Cup’ with ‘Costmonger’ which unravels as a critique of gentrification and the consequences for the band’s local market in Deptford.
LD: “The first thing that got me into politics was the music I was listening to. I loved The Jam, The Specials, stuff like that. I remember when Pete Doherty did a Rock Against Racism gig and I thought “right politics, maybe I’ll get into that”. And then being working class you end up having certain beliefs.
“I never thought I’d vote for the Greens, I always thought it was middle class hippy bollocks, but Zack Polanski is amazing. Big Fan”
As the clock approached 9:30pm, it was almost time for Lewis to head to the stage. Bidding me farewell he proudly showed me the setlist for the night, written on a piece of torn beer packaging.
The gig begins:
The Hope & Ruin wasn’t rammed, but it wasn’t dead either. It was cordially busy but by no means sold out.
Which came as a surprise to me, given the excellence of Hotel Lux’s catalogue. It reinforced my lack of faith in society’s music taste; it’s as though the good music in the world has been drowned out by the wrath of Chris Martin.
Wandering out of the crowd and onto the stage, the band began to arrange their various selections of alcoholic beverages as they rolled into their fittingly titled opening track ‘Encore’.
I watched and smiled as Lewis knocked over his various cans of Stella before kicking his bottle of water like it was an insult to his character.
Alcohol seemed to be the binding motif of the evening. Though by this point he had ventured to a can of Stella, his pint of vodka lime soda remained reassuringly by his side. As the rolling twangs of ‘The Bitter Cup’ began, he picked up the plastic glass, grabbed the straw and plucked it from the improvised cocktail taking a keen swig.
It seemed a logical choice for Lux to include a cover of ‘The Bitter Cup’, originally written by Billy Childish, on the album. The lyrics are coarse and disgusting in their description of alcohol reliance in a way that doesn’t entirely fit Hotel Lux’s back catalogue.
“There’s no taste sweeter than the rush of hot vomit, sieved through decaying back teeth”.
But the inclusion of ‘The Bitter Cup’ deepens the self-reflective themes on the album, further marking the band’s lyrical departure from the narrative driven and reluctantly upbeat tracks that make up ‘Hands Across The Creek’.
Beer in hand Duffin spat into the mic, “stumbling and hoping, inside I was lonely, I’m sick and I’m down and I’m drunk”.
Despite being a cover, it’s hard to tell how literally to take the lyrics. Especially when they’re being performed by a frontman who has no trouble sinking pints.
Towards something that flirts with optimism, the keyboards of ‘Joy’ filled the room. It’s probably the cheeriest song of the album, using spoken word lyricism to dash through an account of the band’s love for living in South London.
The highlight of the set was undoubtedly ‘Ballad Of You And I’. The lyrics are tight and concise, describing a sinking relationship’s decline into desperate imbalances. Duffin seems to have a habit of writing woeful lyrics within his storytelling. Many of the songs, even those with a more upbeat shell, have a resigned defeatism about them.
But unique to ‘Ballad Of You And I’ is a more head on acceptance of emotion, rather than drowning it out in dry-wit humour.
The 2020 single was released with an accompanying music video starring the actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster, most famous for his roles in ‘The Maze Runner’, ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Nanny McPhee’. Despite Sangster’s fame, I was told earlier that evening that he was paid in just fish and chips after drunkenly agreeing to the role at a gig.
Throughout their set I found myself grinning at Duffin’s showmanship. His performance appears effortless and is uniquely nonchalant for a punk frontman.
He’s not crowd surfing or demanding mosh pits, he bobs around the stage occasionally flinging his arms to the beat. He almost resembles a 90s secondary school teacher in his thinly chequered wide shouldered suit jacket.
Marking the halfway point in the set Lewis declared, “Right, I’m going to f*ck off for 5 minutes and Sam’s gonna sing you a song. He has a much nicer voice than me anyway”.
As he hopped off the stage and disappeared into the crowd, Guitarist Sam Coburn took over the show to perform ‘Hand Of Mine’.
Lewis is right, Coburn does have a lovely voice. His approach to ‘Hand Of Mine’ transforms the sound of the band into what could easily be a totally different group.
Lewis returned to the stage cradling several Stella Artois, with a few more tucked away in his pocket. After distributing them to the band and indulging in one himself he was ready to return for ‘John Healy’, which, ironically, carries themes of alcoholism destitution.
During his subsequent performance it occurred to me there is a more bullish frontman beneath his current outfit.
This came particularly to life throughout ‘Tabloid Newspaper’ during which he began dancing a jig, spinning around in circles and grasping the microphone as he shouted, “I’m a liar, I’m a twister of the truth”.
The set ended with ‘Hands Across The Creek’ favourite, ‘National Team’. Written by the band’s former bassist Cam Sims, the track explores an ego trap in which he battles feelings of inadequacy and self-comparison to footballers.
I walked away from the gig remembering why I became a fan of Hotel Lux. Despite their self-diagnosed “second album syndrome”, the final fruit of their labour is as delightfully downbeat as ever.
Lewis Duffin plays no character. He was as personably entertaining in conversation as he was on stage. Though a dangerous night to be a Stella, or any alcohol, Hotel Lux’s performance strikes a unique balance between drunkenness, emotional outpourings and fantastic political lectures.
Hotel Lux:
Lewis Duffin – vocals
Sam Coburn – guitar, vocals
Max Oliver – guitar, vocals, organ
Dillon Home – keys, guitars, harmonica
Charlie Weight – bass
Craig Mcvicar – drums
Hotel Lux setlist:
‘Encore’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Bitter Cup’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Nod (To The Retrospect)’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Joy’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Ballad Of You & I’ (from 2020 ‘Barstool Preaching’ EP)
‘Eastbound & Down’ (from 2023 ‘Hands Across The Creek’ album)
‘The Fear’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Hand O Mine’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Song For John Healy’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Another One Gone’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘Costermonger’ (from 2025 ‘The Bitter Cup’ album)
‘The Last Hangman’ (a 2017 single)
‘Tabloid Newspaper’ (from 2020 ‘Barstool Preaching’ EP)
‘National Team’ (from 2023 ‘Hands Across The Creek’ album)
