The toxic burlesque has opened its doors for a new act, Luvcat, and their methodically gristled debut lovecake album, Vicious Delicious. Released on Halloween 2025 (October 31st) through AWAL, it is a debut with energy and swing.
However, it is a piece of work that does not really know what it wants to say or how to say it. With that in mind, it is an album that reaches for an image that may not exist, not because of a divide between the sound of Vicious Delicious and the sound of the musical canon, but an inverse of that. There is a convergence, a coalescence, an absorption that occurs in this album. The bubblegum sweetness of Blonde Pop stereotypical stardom mixes with the raw, renegade emotions of unprotected swordplay. This is then doused in the gasoline of a shadowy, echoey sonic aesthetic and lit on fire by the swinging, upbeat beat of made-for-radio Pop.
Looking deeper, the persona of Luvcat is someone your dad might describe as Taylor Swift, but with a little more black velvet and eyeliner. The creative alter ego of Sophie Morgan Howarth, from Liverpool, she began making music under the name in 2023 and has found enough success with her noir nightclub aesthetic to release an album fully immersed in subversive, surrealist storytelling. Taking all of this into consideration, Vicious Delicious is a concept album that tells the story of a female consort with nothing left but toxic love to give to anyone willing to take it. To make it clear, Luvcat is not a brothelworker, despite what her music and style may make you think.
Sonically, Vicious Delicious will give you a solid slow build to soundtrack your BDSM fantasies, but nothing too atrociously devious. There is an edge of refinement in this album’s production quality that alerts the reader to the showmanship and performative quality of the music. Each song is a soliloquy to a lover, pleading for something to save a lustful soul sitting pretty on a lush heart-shaped velvet couch. That is to say, the tale from the gutter, with spunk on the cold concrete, will not be told in Vicious Delicious.
Howarth’s voice in the opening track, “Lipstick,” is proof of this, as it carries the weight of 1000 ships as belts in the midpart of the song. Joining “Lipstick,” “Alien,” “The Kazimier Garden,” and “Laurie” have to be the best tracks on the album. These four succeed in achieving the storytelling fantasy that Luvcat is trying to sell. On top of this, they have an iconic quality, with a sense of déjà vu in their chord progressions. Each song sounds like one that has already gone viral. From the quarantine Vaporblues of 2020 to the speedy Slutpop of summer 2024, this album is a proud product of its generation, a loudspeaker of the era. Luvcat projects the world she sees around her while maintaining a persona throughout.
This style of artistic presentation is much more common in the now Gen-Z-dominated music scene. This is an aftereffect of the creator economy, the shared understanding of behind-the-scenes work, a lifting of the veil of Hollywood magic. Faye Webster’s Underdressed at the Symphony from 2024, or Sombr’s consistently indie production leading up to I Barely Know Her from 2025, are examples of this new art style that derives from punk’s no-holds-barred ideology, but holds its true heart in the nostalgia of the 2010’s IDGAF and derp era. Well, what is most important is that these songs are pretty catchy. Crisp vocals with excellent pacing and lyrics that tell a story, what more do you need?
To be fair, Luvcat rules, and this is just the beginning for an artist who is creating a pretty alluring image with her music. But also to be fair, this is a blonde white girl playing around with a very tame and straightforward version of sexual fantasy in music. The toxic yet seductive vixen is an image that has been seen many times before, so what will make Luvcat stand out from the crowd? There is an infinitely large frontier of online music that explores ego, taboo, storytelling, emotion, voice, silence, love, and death in a more experimental way than Luvcat does in Vicious Delicious, and most of those artists will never get the playtime or Rolling Stone article that Luvcat gets.
However, there is no need to feel any way about this information; you must continue, listen to Luvcat, and enjoy the catchy little tunes from Liverpool that are redefining the radio waves, even if they may be dead silent in the internet underground. That is why Cryptic Rock gives Luvcat’s Vicious Delicious 3 out of 5 stars.
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