Kissing Death is the resolution of every major outstanding issue Mothica had, made manifest. Production value; scope; theme; performance—it’s crazy how efficiently all of these have been tied up, and bumped up by a few notches for good measure.
They were all factors afflicting Nocturnal in 2022, ultimately holding back much of the alt-pop promise it exhibited. Mothica felt like a compelling presence with a true story to tell, streets ahead of a shallow, facile nu-gen crowd she’d been bucketed in with. And yet, Nocturnal was closed off to much of that. Scene conventions kept it gated, and unable to flourish despite how clearly in eyeshot it could be. So when the gates are lifted and the extent of Mothica’s vision can flow forth, obviously you’re gonna notice. The stellar album trailer alone puts that out there, as an assertion of cinematic scope that, previously, was given a desultory gesture towards at best.
It’s an almost note-perfect model to Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, with the only caveat being that Mothica’s dark-pop doesn’t feel quite as revolutionary in the space it’s filling. This is distinctly an extrapolation rather than an entire redesigning of artistic persona, something which Kissing Death has no qualms in letting itself indulge in. The prowl of Exit Plan is more forceful and low-slung; elsewhere, there’s an otherworldly shimmer to the synths on Curiosity Killed The Moth. Even if much of Kissing Death is very centralised in the dark-pop ecosystem, it’s not beholden to tropes that saturate it like Nocturnal was. They’re consolidated and empowered this time, and the efforts to do so clearly pay off.
There’s also the matter of Mothica embracing pop within her work, rather than being covert to save face within ‘alternative’ brandings and coming off all the weaker for it. To go even a step further, Kissing Death is at its best when Mothica is playing at being a popstar as straight as possible. Doomed might be her best song full-stop, purely the beautiful, enigmatically reverbed guitars and a heartbreaking hook, while The Reaper’s impossibly tight gothic synthpop is a fantastic one-off idea. It wouldn’t work as well if there were more like it; the punch is in its individuality and its placing at the album’s centre that magnetises it from top to bottom.
Perhaps the rest of Kissing Death isn’t loaded with more such glittering highlights, but it’s rare to find a true dud, either. Once again, it’s the sort of quality that, placed directly next to its predecessor, makes Mothica look so much better by comparison. If Nocturnal could feel drained through a runtime lengthened by pseudo-ideas without full payoff, a somewhat leaner package is already a cut above. Even on a relatively weaker cut like Another High—where the theatrical impulses feel a little clipped for the outsized bravado it’s trying to envisage—it’s not the sort of fall that’ll leave you dazed and confused afterwards. More so, it’s indicative of a regular album and the peaks and troughs that come with it. You’d be surprised how rare a find that can be in a scene like this.
Then again, you could say the same for Mothica herself. She’s quite clearly a performer rather than the stock template of weak-voiced alt-pop nobody, erring more on ‘normal’ pop fluidity and technique. It might leave her underpowered when the rock guitars on Red crunch through around her, but typically, the bar for what works is set much more consistently higher. Even without the smokiness or archetypical ‘allure’ engendered by this style, Mothica’s is a difficult performance to pick holes in, from the standpoint of pure pop. Nothing ever overreaches or strains itself uncomfortably, a likely byproduct of the cinematic glow in artistry that’d encourage anyone to make a visual album.
It’s an impressive undertaking, if only to bolster an album that does feel as though it’d benefit from the accompaniment. Absolutely, Kissing Death can stand on its own, but the image of Mothica’s relationship with death as the personified reaper—visualised in both romantic and parasocial terms—is a layer of exploration that feels naturally useful. Mothica can already be a more evocative than most in the space, and even as a purely aural experience, the spectre emanating through Kissing Death lends that extra weight. Doomed comes baked with its own tragedy, as a young Mothica finds a bright future sabotaged by those willing to take advantage of her vulnerability, and depression and darkness finds some new cracks to break through. Conversely, Exit Plan’s central line of “How do you live when you don’t wanna die anymore?” finds Mothica able to manage her relationship with her maker, but at the cost of any certainty about what happens next.
Perhaps calling it a ‘positive’ spin isn’t necessarily true, but for an album that does hinge on a notion of romance at its centre, it’s a fittingly filmic thought. You even get a maudlin yet triumphant closer in the title track, a small moment of indulgence that Mothica has earned. For an artist whose obvious yearning for grandeur never filled itself out, Kissing Death makes up for spent time wholeheartedly. It’s Mothica’s best work, without a shadow of a doubt, but also just a really solid pop album in its own right. There’s little to no reason why this wouldn’t have legs on any mainstream or adjacent stage; the construction and purposefulness of it all speaks for itself. Most alt-pop wishes it could glow up this brightly.
For fans of: Halsey, UPSAHL, Royal & The Serpent
‘Kissing Death’ by Mothica is released on 23rd August on Heavy Heart / Rise Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
