A key winds up the mechanical doll, setting her spinning with all the elegance and grace of a virtuoso ballerina. Porcelain skin and pinned-up hair, she's perfection embodied. Suddenly, a spring comes loose, the music jolts and skips, and she's sent spiralling into a world of debaucherous nights and blurred-out mornings. The story of this doll, drawn into the dark by scandalous love affairs and dreams of gothic perfection, gets its first exposure on Luvcat's debut album, 'Vicious Delicious'.
A tale of Sophie Morgan's (aka Luvcat) life so far, it's a record overflowing with dark romance, swirling through smoke-filled rooms and bloodlust-driven affairs, just about keeping sane whilst a whirlpool of madness tried to drag her into the middle. Chaos reigns at Chez Luvcat, but you can't help but throw yourself headfirst into the carnage.
"I was six when I was first asked what I wanted to be, and I said a vampire"
Dialling in from a poolside in Turin in the middle of a festival season for the ages, it's clear that 'Vicious Delicious' isn't just a debut album; it's the musical embodiment of all that Sophie is.
This vicious deliciousness takes on many forms through the lipstick-stained thirteen songs that make up the record, from a date with the devil (‘Dinner @ Brasserie Zédel’), killing your soulmate with dangerous infatuation (‘He’s My Man’), or even in the tale of a maneater from the madhouse (you'll find out soon enough).
By now, you should be getting the idea that Sophie is drawn to the darkness. Choosing to name herself Luvcat after the 1983 anthem by The Cure and taking inspiration from the morbid curiosities of The Smiths and glamorous theatricality of emo heroes My Chemical Romance, this is Sophie exploring her supernatural soul of purest black and slicing it up for all of you to take a bite.
"Mystery is more alluring, I think. It’s more enticing to leave the mind to wander"
Whilst 'Vicious Delicious' explores all the most universal aspects of existence, the purpose of using a stage name is to keep the most revealing details a secret. Drawing a line between bearing all and enticing us in for more, mystery is etched across all that Luvcat is.
As much as 'Vicious Delicious' is an album that built its home in the crumbling, beautifully broken world of fading fin de siècle Europe, it's ultimately a depiction of Sophie's rebirth within music, throwing out the diligent scowl for a demure yet devilish smirk.
Her raucous life thus far predominantly splits itself across three cities with their own romantic appeal: Liverpool, London, and Paris. Describing places like Liverpool's Jacaranda and Kazimier Garden, or London's notoriously naughty Soho, with meticulous detail, Sophie illuminated the ghosts of her favourite songwriters with her own thick-edged style.
"Those three cities accidentally became the beating heart of the record. It wasn't deliberate, but when I was writing the album, it made sense for them to come together. Liverpool is my home; it's where it all began, then London was where all of this insanity really kicked off, whilst fantastical Parisian adventures represent this dream state; that's the endgame.
'Vicious Delicious' was borne out of a collection of happy accidents that occurred at a variety of enigmatic locations in whispers of time that made themselves known in the moments that Luvcat wasn't busy taking the world by storm one stage at a time. In fact, the entire idea of making an album was less of a planned-out routine and more of a calling from the stars.
"I couldn't imagine a debut album without [singles] 'Matador' and 'He's My Man' because they're so central to my story and basically changed my life; if 'Matador' hadn't gone viral last year, there's no way I'd be here today. So, because of that, we ended up on an accidental album campaign.
So, it seems like the stars had aligned for Luvcat. Now came the ever-so-slight issue of finding time to record in a schedule that was full to the rafters. Well, someone, somewhere, must have been smiling down on Luvcat – or, perhaps more aptly, twirling the sands of time in her favour from a crystal ball in a gypsy wagon in Montmartre.
"We recorded it in stolen moments. We passed the deadline for submission by about three weeks, but we still managed to get it in before the absolute final moment.
It might seem as though pinballing across Europe, from studio to studio, might not be conducive to creating a debut album. On the contrary, Luvcat is an entity that cut her teeth on trouble and learned to walk in the whirlwind, so there was never a doubt that her debut would have chaos flowing through its flushed veins.
"The most chaotic show we've ever done was at Heartbreakers in Southampton," Sophie remembers, "my pack failed, I fell into the drumkit and showed my arse to the whole crowd – but it was the best show we've ever had.
"Being young and in love, playing music with your mates: that's all that matters"
As much as Luvcat is ostensibly a lens through which fans can understand Sophie's wonderfully weird worldview, there's enough real-world experience to keep 'Vicious Delicious' anchored, to keep it feeling authentic. Sophie's self-proclaimed favourite song is about one of her mum's friends "who's a proper maneater, she's mad as a box of frogs", whilst penultimate track – a song which nearly missed the cut – underlines that, in the end, all we need is the simple pleasures.
The latter "was the first song I ever wrote when I was making the folk music that I was taking too seriously. I showed it to the band, we would play it acoustically on stage, and people seemed to love it, but it wasn't hitting me hard enough – it wasn't lyrically interesting enough, the colours they were aiming for weren't vibrant or exciting.
"I came back to it a few years later when I was thinking about the journey we're on as a band – last year we played one festival, this summer we've got 34 – and rewrote a bridge that transformed the whole song for me.
"There's a line in it: 'The band will be big in Japan, but it's just you and me in McDonald's, and you're holding my hand'. I was reflecting on this wild love affair I was having with our old bass player, where we'd play a show to our friends in a pub in Liverpool, then go to McDonald's and talk about nothing. I was so happy, so in love. Everything's changing now, but if you took away all the success, the shows in Tokyo or American tours, the tiny shows were just as magical to me because I was with all the people I love the most. Being young and in love, playing music with your mates: that's all that matters."
That's the real beauty of Luvcat, the pink centre to the black heart enrobed in the sultry, crumbling, fishnet-clad glamour of a faded beauty queen. At the end of the day, it's about love. Not ironic, not toxic, not even romantic. It's about foundational love. Whether it's the references to her grandad's beloved Rat Pack, the homage to the rogues and rebels who have passed her by, or the simple act of being on a stage with her best friends, 'Vicious Delicious' is a celebration of all the little things that make us human.
Standing at Lime Street station in her kitten heels and wine-stained dress, waiting to board the steam train to wherever she's going next, Sophie is more than content to ditch the rules and follow her own path. From sweaty rooms on Merseyside to an album announcement day spent swimming in Lake Geneva – and all in the space of a few months – she's focused on enjoying every second of the ride.
"I mean, obviously, I'd love to sell out the tour and do something with Liverpool Football Club, maybe wear their kit with fishnets or something," she giggles.
"But honestly, I just want to remain in love with what we're doing. I want to remain in love with life."
Luvcat's debut album 'Vicious Delicious' is out 31st October.
