Luvcat – ‘Vicious Delicious’ album review: The real deal of a new star
If you’re lucky in this line of work, you’ll witness something historic, and you’ll get to witness it from the very start. It’s rare and rife with false diamonds. But when you find the real thing, when you strike gold, it’s undeniable. You can just tell when you’re watching a real star rise – Luvcat is a real star, and her debut album, Vicious Delicious, is the punctuation to the proof.
The Skinny: A ‘real star’ always has realness – people can sniff out a fake and sense when things don’t feel authentic. In the lyricism across this record, Luvcat doesn’t compromise once on the right image, clearly keeping in all the cheeky codified secrets that speak to her or the metaphors that seem to just say it right.
She keeps it niche. Her favourite restaurant becomes the centre of an obsessive love song, refusing to let go of her own specific dream of desire. Her old haunt of Liverpool’s Kazimier Garden is returned to repeatedly as a pinpoint she spirals around. On the staggeringly heartwrenching ‘Laurie’, her individual anxieties cover a universal feeling beautifully.
Even when she does get broader, like on ‘Alien’ when that particular metaphor for feeling strange is a well-walked path, the swelling instrumental sweeps it up and far away from cliche.
Every basis is covered here: love, lust, heartbreak, betrayal, empowerment and confusion. Each told as a thorough tale, as Luvcat proves her power as a storyteller, just as much as she does as a vocalist. There’s also the delicious sprinkling of fun as even the darkness moments come with a wink and a nudge, a giggle and a gag plucked from exactly how life often serves us silliness alongside severity.
“I’m just a Victorian lost at the Playboy Mansion,” she sings at one point, and it’s just fucking great, exactly the kind of off-the-cuff line that characterises a naturally great writer who trusts her voice enough to crack a joke.
That keeps it real, too. In moments, Luvcat is writing with grandeur, and in others, she’s writing like a girl in her diary, pouring it out in her own unique voice. Both speak to depth, both speak to an artist absolutely made for this, both speak to a star – a real one. One that is sure to keep on rising as the cult that spotted a diamond at the start keeps growing, fast, realising that what they actually found was gold, and gold doesn’t rust.
The Verdict: Luvcat has risen fast, and people love to get cynical or tear that down, especially when it’s a woman. But this is the real deal. Lyrically powerful, balancing poignancy and fun, and instrumentally vast as it ranges from her love of The Cure into pure movie montage pop – it has it all, but delivers it in her way as proof that Luvcat has the authenticity to back up her star power.
Defining song: ‘Dinner @ Brasserie Zedel’
Release date: October 31st | Producer: Oli Barton Wood | Label: Luvcat + AWAL Recordings
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