Swedish singer Tove Lo appeared at a time when female physical sexuality was being used as a raw, blunt weapon in pop, when porno chic reached an apex in music videos. Half a decade ago was the time of Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” and Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball”, thus Lo’s overt displays of sexual bravado seemed part of the same and she had big hits with songs such as “Habits (Stay High)” and “Talking Body”. Her output since, however, has proved her sensual agenda to be more than a passing foible.
The bisexual Lo has pushed for a more emancipated Scandinavian attitude to sex. Her last album, Blue Lips, was unequivocal in the language it used to detail a gritty, destructive lesbian relationship, hewn from pure lust. It didn’t attain the success of its predecessors, boding the question as to whether this was down to its uncensored step away from the usual pop archetypes.
Lo’s fourth album is less ruthlessly one-track and, with appearances from Kylie and dance-pop titan Jax Jones, the forces behind her clearly hope for a better response. It deserves success. Its elegant, sheeny, stately electronic pop has more in common with Röyksopp’s work with Robyn than daytime radio cheese. Lyrically, it’s also more intriguing than most of her pop peers, with songs about sisterhood in the face of a rubbish boyfriend (“Glad He’s Gone”), seeing an old lover with a new one at a party (“Really Don’t Like U” –the Kylie collaboration), and the self-explanatory song about a summer fling with a girl (“Bad as the Boys” – an exquisitely catchy track). And her lyrics still sometimes cut straight to the nub of the matter (“Did you go down on his birthday?/Did you let him leave a necklace?”)
With the exception of the pulsing Jax Jones pair-up, “Jacques”, the pace is more groove than dancefloor, but there’s real song craft here. It’s persuasively hooky, matching her attitude to fine 2019 synth-pop, as on the outstanding, woozy downtempo number “Shifted”. Tove Lo’s latest has a maturity of tone to it but, happily, this is firmly riveted to an album that’s thoroughly contagious.
Below: Watch the video for "Glad He's Gone" by Tove Lo
