Love in a Vicious Way is an instantly classic-sounding album that is fresh, exciting, and unexpectedly comforting.
This review of Mother Tongues’ debut album, Love in a Vicious Way, can go one of two ways: a nostalgia-tinted look back at the music that marked my angsty twenties (of which Mother Tongues reminds me) or a wildly enthusiastic celebration of the duo’s immediately gripping first long-player and what it portends for the future. I’m guessing it will probably be a combo of both. With just one listen, Love in a Vicious Way grabbed me by the ears, pulled me in close and landed a series of forceful, wet, and messy kisses all over my face that left me breathless, stunned, and jonesing for more. Mother Tongues had their way with me. The release is also a wild musical ride that brings me back to my angsty twenties when a new album promising to save, change, and define my life seemed to drop weekly.
Love in a Vicious Way is pitch-perfect as a throwback to early-to-mid 90s gothy psychedelic dream pop. Its bold and brightly coloured mix of late-stage Britpop and leering, lascivious krautrock-inspired electronica explodes out of “Luv 2 Liv.” The instrumental interlude “Ode to Jay” feels of a kind with those on Blur’s Parklife, but rather than exist as a stand-alone, Mother Tongues use the moment to queue up and glow up the ridiculously catchy and glistening single, “Worm Day.” When vocalist and bassist Charise Aragoza repeatedly intones, “Turning off in the distance / All that we used to be / Fading out of existence / At the end of the dream,” on the gorgeously sublime closer “Lonely Ones,” she sends shivers down my spine that ignite a sense memory dormant since Tiger Bay-era Saint Etienne.
Mother Tongues know their way around a classic pop hook (see opening song “A Heart Beating”) and how to subvert said hook for maximum impact (as per the guitar-heavy riffing popping off “Dance in the Dark” before its melodic core blossoms into a gentle and dreamy haze). But Mother Tongues’ appeal goes beyond mere musical revival. Aragoza and guitarist/vocalist Lukas Cheung tap into themes of love’s tendency to inflict pain and pleasure in equal measures, dose us with bouts of self-discovery and self-doubt, and leave us irrevocably transformed. This tendency towards darker and wrought lyrical themes illuminates their dreamy, poppy canvases. On the title track, Aragoza breathlessly intones, “Making it through the day / Don’t have an appetite / Love in a vicious way / Keeping you up at night,” with the energy of an insomniac three weeks into a sleepless spell. And yet, there’s an edge and determination in her delivery that suggest she’s willing to fight for love, even when it’s unclear whether the relationship is worth fighting for.
Love in a Vicious Way is a euphoric exploration of love’s brutality and beauty set to a beatific, wide-ranging soundtrack of influences from psychedelic prog rock to swirling 90s indie dream pop to thunderous electronic anthems. It is a sound and style that Cheung and Aragoza make their own, bending tropes to their will and subverting expectations to craft an instantly classic-sounding album that is fresh, exciting, and—for all its unnerving, disquieting anxiety—unexpectedly comforting.
