Review: Tove Lo Continues Dark Lust Saga on ‘Blue Lips’
The sequel to Tove Lo‘s raw Lady Wood,
like her stylized longform videos, deals explicitly with derangement – sexual,
emotional, drug-induced. It’d be easy to dismiss as softcore shock-pop if
her songwriting wasn’t so formidable. The nicely-titled “Disco Tits” is
a lustily convincing club single; “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and “Struggle”
tunefully unpack messy relationship psychology, E.M. Forster’s “only connect” repurposed for the dancefloor. More problematic is “Bitches,”
an icy banger evidently involving unsafe sex and gynophobic hook-ups. Like much
of Tove Lo’s work, it’s admirably uncensored, but may leave you craving a
shower, however close to home it lands.