By Hana Sakurai Wernham, First Year English
The love song: one of humanity’s most enduring art forms. Also one of the most oversaturated. The renaissance sonneteers got there first, and thanks to them it’s hard to write a love song that doesn’t invoke dusty romantic clichés. Your mistress’s eyes are like the sun? I’ve heard that one before…
This poses a problem for modern artists: how can you possibly innovate on the form? Keep things fresh? Luvcat has the solution: systematically poison your lover with arsenic and write a murder ballad all about your tangled feelings of obsession and violence. Ah, of course!
This is the subject of Luvcat’s second single, ‘He’s My Man’, which was met with mega views on TikTok and Instagram. Phone camera videos of the song being performed live managed to capture the zeitgeist’s growing affinity for theatrical pop and made-up frontwomen.
Despite only having three singles out at the time of writing, Luvcat have amassed half a million monthly Spotify listeners. Crammed in a crowd of excited young people at Old Market’s Exchange, I can see why.
Luvcat occupy a vivid fictional world: it’s one of batting eyelashes, red lipstick and blood, one where impossible and magical happenings are commonplace, and where your hair must always be in pin curls. So it follows naturally that the stage is littered with candles and dusty lamps and awash in a red light that is equal parts terrifying and sexy.
It creates the perfect backdrop for their sound, characterised by seductive female vocals, gritty in the lower register and swooping airily through the top end, over a (probably velvet) bed of palm-muted whispering acoustic guitar and creeping synth cries.
Most of the gig is unreleased material, but when the singles are played, the audience sings along like an obedient choir of accomplices. Femme fatale frontwoman (who goes by the moniker Luvcat itself – murderers need alter egos, after all) conducts us a capella at the end of the gig, beaming. ‘This is proper mad,’ she thanks us in effusive Liverpudlian.
I’m looking forward especially to the release of ‘Alchemy’, which she tells us is about getting whisked off to Paris by a handsome stranger and ending up in the back of a police van. Now that’s material! It’s delightfully sultry vocals over a stomping beat, exploring the experience of a love that feels oh so good but is oh so bad. ‘Bad for me, it’s bad for you, what can we do? It’s alchemy,’ she sings.
The band’s performance is gleamingly polished – Luvcat is endlessly charismatic, each twirl or hand motion well timed and aptly illustrative of her vivid lyricism. Her band are tight, four suited-and-booted men, stylish but comparably plain (as to ensure maximum attention on the frontwoman – as things should be!).
In a lot of the songs, instrumentals are suspended for just a few beats, leaving isolated vocals to hang in the air, then all return for entry into the chorus – super satisfying.
Luvcat’s emphasis on performance, in the sense of both live prowess and artistic self-fashioning, really captures me. I’ve always been both baffled and slightly underwhelmed by when artists present themselves in their music as exactly who they are, no embellishments. Sure, honesty is compelling, but if given the power to completely transcend your ordinary life, why not take it?
Luvcat have certainly seized this transformative power. The story of Luvcat is based on biographical truths – a heritage of Liverpudlian glamour, complicated relationships, glittery romances in Soho bars. But these truths are re-fashioned and re-arranged – after all, half-truths make for far more glamorous music.
Featured Image: Hana Sakurai WernhamDo you like hearing unreleased songs at gigs?
