Tove Lo got big by breaking herself. She topped the charts with the stark, corrosive imagery of first hit, 2014’s “Habits (Stay High)”: vomiting in bathtubs, trapping her mind in a haze. Self-destruction has paved the way for self-care in much of mainstream female pop; you’re less likely to hear a woman on the radio brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack than you are to hear her describing her skincare routine. Women are charged with empowering other women: Everyone’s a hot girl, no matter what the season.
Tove Lo cracks this dynamic open on Sunshine Kitty, a title that she’s said is “a play on pussy power.” There are tote-bag-ready you-go-girlisms on the album, but they’re lit by neon and grounded in nuance. “Bad as the Boys,” a shiny single about the collapse of a queer relationship, has a fairly boring premise—women can break hearts, too! But the song surpasses its set-up, partly because of its shimmering production and partly because Tove Lo eloquently describes the specific pains of a bi woman trying to navigate a heterosexual-dominant dating culture. On the album, she sings about using women and being used by them, about competing for male attention with women she’s attracted to. “When I hate on you, I’m breaking the code,” Kylie Minogue confesses to Tove on one of the album’s best tracks. “Hard to be fair to you when I got my heart broke,” she admits seconds later.
Sunshine Kitty holds some of Tove Lo’s most vulnerable writing; it’s also her clubbiest record. The result is a cutting confessional line like, “I think you like the way she kissed you better/Maybe I’m mistaken,” thrown over thrumming bass. These are house anthems and each track has a unique texture: undulating drums, layered effects that sound like a chain being rattled. She churns through emotions—lust, shame, defeat—as each winding beat paves the way to the next.
Tove Lo once wrote a sardonic ode to the effortless “Cool Girl”; now, she revels in overthinking, highlighting the neuroticism that underpins each corner of a party. “I see you looking, so I turn my charm on, hoping I look awesome,” she sings on “Equally Lost.” She calculates when to ask someone for a cigarette. She deconstructs each kiss. There’s an entire track wrestling with whether or not to disclose an affair, another consumed with asking someone to stay over. Tove Lo’s songwriting is unsubtle but not uncomplicated, and while her scenes are well-worn in pop music—bodies tangled in purple lights, morning sun stabbing at hangovers—her best tracks are both blunt and polished enough to sound original.
At its worst, the album can slump into fizzy banalities. The last track shows Tove Lo in love, and she wreaths her emotions with generic hyperbole. “I’ll follow you anywhere you go,” she cries over a beat ready to be bastardized by the Chainsmokers. “Jacques,” a mostly fun song with British DJ Jax Jones, can sound like the worst kid in your study abroad program trying to get past a bouncer: “Je m’appelle Tove, get the show on the road,” she chants. These lines dissolve into the glitter, though; it’s hard to focus on any one moment in an album that yanks you through the dancefloor. In Tove Lo’s world, there is no emotion too grave or grand to take place outside the club.
Buy: Rough Trade
