The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.
Luvcat’s persona is a double-edged sword.
The English artist, previously known as Sophie Morgan,1 plays the role of an occasionally otherworldly femme fatale on her debut long-player, Vicious Delicious, with sultry flair that frequently rubs against camp.
The gender-swapped Alice Cooper approach to songcraft provides the project a clear macabre direction and a hook that sets Vicious Delicious apart from the pop pack. Luvcat’s goth-tinged pin-up look, the album’s stylishly illustrated cover depicting a pair of fishnet-clad legs and a tube of scarlet lipstick protruding from a box of cigarettes, its morbid songs and a Halloween release date2 all work in concert to answer the question, “What if Cruella de Vil was both real and a Gen Z pop girlie?”
It’s well coordinated and borders on striking, but it poses a sizeable challenge for Vicious Delicious. A slightly vulgar Morticia Addams persona is enough to sustain a song or two, but not enough on its own to power an album, especially when many of the album’s songs were previously released as singles. It also makes it difficult to pin down whether there are sincere sentiments in Luvcat’s music and if it’s worth seriously considering Vicious Delicious’ dark pop music. It’s a self-inflicted challenge that Luvcat overcomes by making music that’s a bit more creative, clever and catchy than it needs to be.
As long as there are precocious Stephen King-reading middle-schoolers, there will be a built-in audience for an artist who presents herself as a blend of Alison Mosshart of the Kills and Sabrina Carpenter, writes songs about spousal poisoning and sounds cool as hell drawling out a gratuitous F-bomb.3 However, Vicious Delicious has enough charm to appeal to the desultory Hot Topic shopper inside listeners removed by time or temperament from that season of life.4
Craft and near-complete commitment to the bit do the heavy lifting there. Luvcat makes use of unexpectedly rich textures to make her creepy pop songs. There are audible elements of country murder ballads, cabaret, jazz and world music on Vicious Delicious. Things flag when songs are built around more conventional indie pop sounds, like “Blushing,” but for the most part, Luvcat frollicks in her preferred noir trappings. Nearly every affectionate word is cooed with the same arch-animosity readers might imagine dripping from the final line of Pet Sematary. More energetic moments crackle with hammy self-importance that also seems dangerous. If a Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard had to entertain a nightclub after her break with reality, it would sound a lot like “Dinner @ Dinner @ Brasserie Zédel,” complete with the song’s many power-dynamic entendres.
Its chorus, “When are you gonna make me your baby?/ I wanna die in your arms/ When are you gonna make me your baby?/ Baby, it’s all that I want,” is a creepy jumble of allusion, psycho-sexual weirdness and grim implications that manages to be catchy. “Matador” pulls off a similar trick with “I came crawlin’ in on all fours/ Knockin’ at your door/ Knockin’ at your door/ I don’t wanna bleed anymore/ I just wanted love/ But you wanted gore.” If Luvcat’s aesthetics are Alice Cooper, her writing on love is Jarvis Cocker at his most blatantly deviant.
The narrators of these songs are usually tragic, larger-than-life figures. They’re grandiose, pitiable, sometimes murderous or mad creatures, but they also exude charisma with their grand prenouncements. Kinks and odd appetites lurk in barely concealed subtext. “I can be your cowgirl or your stewardess/ Or your bedside nurse moppin’ up your sweat,” is an especially unsubtle example.5 Every dalliance comes with life-or-death stakes.
All of this melodrama is quite silly, and that’s made glaringly obvious whenever the music lightens up and the lyrics fail to follow suit. In a pop music landscape riddled with overly dramatic love songs set to anodyne music, it’s nice that there’s an alternative with bull-attack metaphors, even if that gets goofy. Anyone familiar with the shock-rock tropes that Vicious Delicious plays with is unlikely to find anything revelatory on the album, but it’s still mostly a good time, and it could be a big deal for those kids working their way through Christine6 during study hall.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Calcutta – a noir set in post-war India, with Alan Ladd as a pilot who takes leave from the job to investigate the murder of his colleague and friend. Not too many surprises in the mystery itself but it’s a fun, pulpy setup with some excellently colorful supporting characters, so I had a good time. I particularly enjoyed William Bendix (always good in the “friend who wants to resolve the mystery with violence” role) and June Duprez as Ladd’s long-suffering girlfriend.
The Practice, “Committed” – When the court asks for a pro bono favor, Lindsey (literally) draws the short straw and has to help an institutionalized serial killer plead his case for getting his release as his behavior has changed. Lindsey of course is still coping with her own serial killer, but takes to case so she can face the fear. Richard Thomas is good if not great as the killer, and this is about as close as the show has gotten to actually asking what the purpose of sending people to prison is. (Overall, “murderers should go to prison for life” is still never challenged.) Meanwhile, Eugene’s ex-wife’s new lover is found murdered with a baseball bat in her bed. Did their son do it? No, of course not, but the crux of this is not who did it, but how Eugene handles it. We also have a very unpleasant scene where Richard Bay, who really thinks he is not a racist, just a pragmatic DA, says if he wanted a conviction, it would be easy to get big Black scary Eugene convicted. It’s true, but Richard is also getting very hard to like.
Frasier, “Sliding Frasiers” – Like the movie the title is referencing, we see two timelines of events, one where Frasier meets and is smitten with Charlotte Ross and one where his Valentine’s Day is a total dud. But since his wooing of Charlotte is over the top, he ends up alone after all and both timelines end up in the same place. So what really was the point of this?
The Lowdown, “This Land?”
Best episode so far. Peter Dinklage’s guest appearance here proving that the show is at its best when it’s arc-based but not strictly serialized: this isn’t the episode stalling out on the main story, it’s the episode being an episode and bothering to tell an emotionally affecting standalone story. Dinklage and Hawke’s sit-down with their dead friend’s photograph and their muted-but-raw confrontation–“Not even me”–is one of the most memorable scenes of the show so far. And when the episode ducks back into its ongoing story, we get one of the other most memorable scenes, as Lee’s dragged through an unpredictable drunken cop party that feels legitimately dangerous, like it’s a hairsbreadth away from him being murdered by a mob. Excellent stuff.
Dinklage gets the two comedy highlights of the episode, with “Only a dog wants a bone” and his scorn about Lee conducting so much of his investigation by Googling things.
The X-Files, “Herrenvolk”
It’s the season four premiere! That’s good! But i’s a mytharc episode! That’s bad! But you get your choice of toppings!
In this case, the appealing toppings are bees (BEES!), a good final Mulder-Scully conversation, and a strong death scene for X. Steven Williams is a strong actor who never got an interesting enough character to play here, despite occasional efforts to define him in a compelling way; I can’t mourn X like I did (and still do) Deep Throat. But his long crawl down Mulder’s hall to write a next step on the floor in his own blood is badass–a fitting last act for a character who always knew how much he wanted to commit and didn’t hesitate to take violent actions, with both of those attributes turned inward in his last moments–and a haunting visual. Also, Laurie Holden’s here! Hi, Laurie Holden!
I am pretty much checked-out of the mytharc at this point, and I couldn’t muster much interest in the young Samantha clone “worker bee,” but I did like Jeremiah’s peculiar, specific phrasing about her: “She has no language.” The show can sometimes do a good job using small details like that to create a sufficiently alien feel.
Excited to finally be getting to “Home.”
Oh hell to the yes, “Home.”
The Kids In The Hall, Season Four, Episode Eleven
“I didn’t feel the need to say ‘Hey, best friend, watch out for that car’.”
“I mean, we’ve been coming here for fifty years and performing anal probes, and all that we have learned is that one in ten of them don’t seem to mind.”
“I’m a good worker now! I find it helps when you don’t come to work drunk!”
“Yeah, or if we threw you out. One two three four!”
“Dear guy I clotheslined as you went by on your bike.”
“Shouldn’t one of us stay sober in case one of us has to operate a fire extinguisher or something?”
“Hello, police? I’d like to report a nude woman out the front of 7/11 in about fifteen minutes.”
The Killer
An action movie about how, in times of extreme stress, we end up running to what we love – ourselves, maybe, but also friendship and moral codes. I’ve wanted to see this movie for years, and it didn’t disappoint – melodrama, operatic violence, everything everyone said it would be. Australian Tubi comes through again! Amazing, though, that one can immediately see what Woo lost when he went to America – this is lean, efficient, and out of control, and as a rule, none of those things appeal to American film executives.
What Did We Listen To?
I am just half an hour into Blank Check and the return of my favorite guests, Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas, and loving it already. Only three hours to go! (And yet I still don’t find much interest in listening to How Did This Get Made?)
1001 Albums, etc.:
ABC – The Lexicon of Love: really like the crisp, punchy production here (from Trevor Horn, who I kind of assumed was “the sound of the 80s” but has a less intense production discography than I thought). The songs sometimes get a bit too far into that slightly smug 80s pop sound for me but the hits are hard to deny.
Prince – 1999: yeah this is pretty great, I’ve never been the biggest Prince fan but he’s firing on all cylinders here and delivering a ton of excellent, funky pop songs.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – The Message: only really knew a couple of these tracks, the rest of the album goes in some unexpected directions with full-on electro (Scorpio) and a couple of schmaltzy (but oddly charming) ballads, including a tribute to Stevie Wonder. Quite fun.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions – Imperial Bedroom: bored of Elvis II now, sorry. His early stuff has a little punky edge that gets me through but he’s almost all of the way into MOR “mature” songwriter here and it’s inoffensive but dull.
The Cure – Pornography: I wonder if I’d appreciate the gothy / angular side of the Cure more if I didn’t like their poppier stuff so much. This is admirably dark but I do miss the tunes.
Dexys Midnight Runners – Too-Rye-Aye: not as much of a pleasant surprise as their first album (perhaps inevitably) but still pretty good. “Come on Eileen” is one of those songs I think I’ve heard too many times to really enjoy any more but then it comes on and I’m all like “you sons of bitches, I’m back in”.
Simple Minds – New Gold Dream: not bad, not great. Jim Kerr isn’t one of the more interesting frontmen of the era, there are some good songs but I feel like a better singer could have elevated them considerably. The vaguely new-wavey music is solid though.
—
Blank Check – finished off the Hail, Caesar! episode (so much to talk about there, what a wonderful film) and am now 3hrs into Buster Scruggs. Curious that a couple of them picked out “The Gal Who Got Rattled” as their least favourite because for me that’s the one segment I’d put up with the very best of their work, I love it so much. Some of this episode is a little chaotic for my tastes (there’s a point where three people attempt the same joke in a row because they’re clearly not listening to each other) but mostly a good time! Interested to see if they have anything notable to say about the solo Coens movies, I’m more fond of Drive Away Dolls than most but none of the solo stuff comes close to their work together.
I suspect that the Macbeth episode will talk more about Shakespeare adaptations as a whole and Denzel’a career than about the movie. (Since I suspect they don’t want to do a series on Orson Welles, this might be the one time we hear them talk about his Shakespeare trilogy.)
I always enjoy a career-overview kinda episode although I’m not sure if they’ve gone deep on Denzel before (I haven’t seen the Manchurian Candidate remake or Flight so haven’t heard those episodes, not sure if there’s any other Denzel?) – I struggle with Shakespeare a bit which I guess is why Joel Coen’s Macbeth is only kept from the bottom of my Coens rankings by Ladykillers being actively terrible.
Someday they are bound to do Tony Scott or Spike Lee so maybe they can just kick Denzel down the road till then.
They also covered him for Philadelphia.
I am definitely siding with the poppier side of The Cure too, Pornography was terrific mainly when I was 16.
When Dexy’s played Jackie Wilson Said on Top of the Pops the screen showed a picture of Scottish darts pro Jocky Wilson. It remains an unsolved mystery if the band did it as a joke or if somebody at the BBC just got the wrong file photo.
I’m sorry but you can’t quote TOTP / BBC trivia at a British person. I was taught this information in a special class at primary school.
Parts Work – Parts Work (EP)
When writing about Hop Along, I realized that Frances Quinlan and Kyle Pulley had teamed up for an EP. It’s a slight, art-pop release that didn’t really get its hooks into me.
Drain – …Is Your Friend
This hardcore band is showing up on a lot of festival posters. That couples with the adorable bloody shark child who shows up on their album art convinced me to give them a go. It’s well-made hardcore, but screamed vocals usually aren’t for me.
Armand Hammer / The Alchemist- Mercy
The billy woods and Elucid team up makes English its plaything but rarely sounds fun. The Alchemist gives the two serious emcees interesting beats to work with, and the guest list brings it’s A game, too. Gotta love multiple Quelled Chris features.
Big Grams-Big Grams
After watching OutKast’s chaotic Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame induction, I wanted to see if Big Boi’s project with indie poppers Phantogram has improved with time. Not really. But “Lights On” and “Goldmine Junkie” are about as good as this oddball pairing could possibly produce.
The top five albums of Nath’s best-of-the-’00s list!
Hearts of Oak, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Rich, gorgeous album. I can’t decide if my favorite is “The High Party”–those choruses are irresistible, so catchy and dark–or “The Ballad of the Sin Eater”–more lyrically complex overall, but again, in possession of an absolutely killer chorus, but it’s one of those. Spoiled for choice, however. (Uh, there was a time when saying something reminded me of Neil Gaiman was obviously a compliment, and that’s obviously no longer the case, but this–and Leo does remind me of what I love about Gaiman’s work, especially the earlier stuff that will always mean a lot to me.)
The Moon and Antarctica, Modest Mouse
I knew “Lives” but hadn’t heard it in a few years, and I’d almost forgotten how much I love it: my jaw dropped when it started to play. (And that song has such a beautiful transition point in it, with the gritty despair shifting, at least for a while, into something like a bubbling brook of stream-of-consciousness, melodic but desperate.) And while it’s my favorite here, I also want to shout-out “3rd Planet” and its chill, moving, evocative sadness–a lot of this album reminds me of Roger Ebert’s line about how no good movie is depressing, no matter how sad or despairing it is; the beauty redeems it–and the anguished care of “Alone Down There.” “Wild Packs of Family Dogs” reminds me of Josh Ritter, which is a compliment. But “Lives.” It all comes back to “Lives.”
Separation Sunday, The Hold Steady
I am, as established, a fan of story songs, and after seeing Craig Finn open for the Mountain Goats a while back, I was excited to get to this one. It did not disappoint: in fact, it may be my favorite of the top five albums on Nath’s list. I love the scruffy, odd-angled Biblical takes of “Cattle and the Creeping Things” and the solemnity and ache of “Crucifixion Cruise,” but the knockout here is “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” which is so shivery and triumphant and transcendent. I’ve been getting goosebumps whenever I think about it.
The College Dropout, Kanye West
One of my favorite album covers of the whole list.
I’m impressed by the determination and sheer enduring performance of “Through the Wire,” and I like the the rough-edged soulfulness of “Jesus Walks,” but my top two favorites here were actually “The New Workout Plan” (funny and catchy, and while it’s less substantial than “We Don’t Care,” another satirical hit here, it feels a little more vibrant to me, maybe because it’s less substantial) and “Spaceship,” which takes my #1 spot here. Considering my favorite Lil Wayne song was “Phone Home,” I feel like I have a real extraterrestrial/science-fictional theme developing here–this is, apparently, what resonates with me the most.
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
That warm static crackle. It can be heard to be plaintive in songs without it coming across as whiny, but Wilco knows how to do it: it’s partly the control and partly the weariness. This isn’t an album where I’m all that conscious of individual songs–“Ashes of American Flags” is a standout, and so is the livelier “Pot Kettle Black,” but I was familiar with that one and knew to listen for it–so I just wind up dissolving into it, floating from perfectly-turned line to perfectly-turned line. Smart, immersive, beautiful work–predominantly but not entirely mournful (that shift-up to “Heavy Metal Drummer” is notable and appreciated for its break).
This concludes my epic project of following along with someone else’s epic project! I’m really glad I did this, because I discovered a lot of music I wouldn’t have otherwise, found out how intensely some of my memories are tied to what was on the radio, got a better sense of what I like in music in general and in rap in particular (a genre I was only spottily experienced in before and am now at least slightly less spottily experienced in), and picked up a lot of new favorites.
I did get to write longer pieces about two of these five, but to be honest, not getting to the other three— especially the non-Kanye ones, which feel more like my own corner of the world and less where that corner intersects with reality— has been one of my regrets since I first started at this nine years ago. On the bright side, I guess I only have to write about three of them since I’ve written so much before.
Hearts of Oak is another real personal favorite on this list– which I guess they all are, but this feels like the one in the top five least likely to overlap with any sort of broader consensus about its greatest (maybe Separation Sunday is close, especially since subsequent albums are more widely acclaimed there). But there’s just something about it that really speaks to me. And while at first I loved all the early tracks– the two you mentioned, actual single “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” But over time the later tracks became my favorites: “Bridges, Squares” / “Tell Balgeary, Balgury Is Dead” / “2nd Ave, 11 AM” is one of my favorite three-song runs on any album, with each one better than the one before. “Balgeary” – I’m a mark for a good key shift. “2nd Ave” – the final repeating refrain of the outro is my social media bio in most places.
I could write so many more words about how Separation Sunday works for and speaks to me personally, but I probably wouldn’t top what I wrote in the original series. “Yr Little Hoodrat Friend” is probably the most single-like song, or at least the most straightforward rocker you could see getting airplay. I’m also quite fond of the story and imagery in “Banging Camp,” and how the big guitar riff introduces us to “Hornets! Hornets!”, the album as a whole, and Holly. A real classic-rock throwback at a time when punk and post-punk was more influential on the indie-rock world, and such a vivid world and characters and story! And, yes, “How a Resurrection Really Feels” is a huge triumph of a closer.
“Dead Voices” is great, too, and “The Anointed One” is resonant for any of us who had what we thought was an equally radical friend in college who ultimately went back to family money and a safer, more comfortable life and politics. The last two tracks are a little slighter but I still feel speak personally to me: Being the first to finish and the last to start. Don’t you let them tell you that you’re wrong.
I could pick a different song that’s been my favorite on The College Dropout for each day of the week. “We Don’t Care.” “Slow Jamz.” “Never Let Me Down.” “Through the Wire.” “Two Words.” “The New Workout Plan.” …Okay, that’s only six, and while I love nearly every other track (“Breathe In Breathe Out” and the last two may be merely good), I couldn’t honestly say they were ever my #1 favorite. “Spaceship”, “School Spirit,” and “Jesus Walks” may come closest. And “All Falls Down.” Fuck, I don’t think I cut that down at all.
I just love the sheer array of songs on this one. For being very much Kanye West stylistically, there’s a pretty big variety of styles among the songs themselves; the gangster bombast of “Two Words” vs. the goofy ballad of “Slow Jamz,” for just one example. And the lyrics may be Kanye at his most thoughtful and least egotistical. Just very resonant with me.
I don’t know that I have anything new to say about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot at this point, or The Moon and Antarctica.
Also, hooray! I’m always glad when I find that my work has made an impact on even one person’s life.
Westerman has a new album out so I went back to his last one from 2023, An Inbuilt Fault. Really good depressive British pop, like Peter Gabriel vibing out to The Blue Nile, especially the title song and the moody feeling of “Take.” My favorite song of his though is from his previous record, “Your Hero Is Not Dead,” which is profoundly moving and has a certain bravery to it. https://youtu.be/8OFYyFhWTYE?si=aac9MkGCOmY_c2D4
Year of the Month update!
This December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rope
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
And there’s still time write about any of these 2018 movies, albums, books, et al this month!
Nov. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Ralph Breaks the Internet
Nov. 24th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Venom
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros