- 2024-08-25
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MUSIC
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MOTHICA Releases New Album “Kissing Death”
Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter MOTHICA released her third studio album “Kissing Death” on August 23, 2024 via her own imprint Heavy Heart Records partnering with Rise Records.
It is the visual album featuring 12 tracks and their accompanying music videos.
Produced by David Burris, Micah Jasper, Nick Sadler and NYDGE.
This marks her first body of work in two years since the 2022 album “Nocturnal”.
Death is an uncomfortable topic that most people avoid thinking about, but MOTHICA decides to dance with it. Vulnerably, she laments her personal battles with depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, processing her pain with lush soundscapes.
MOTHICA said, “For my whole life, I’ve romanticized death. In the back of my mind, suicide seemed like a natural and easy solution. When my thoughts get dark, I remind myself that we have an infinite amount of time to ‘not exist.’ For the small sliver I’m here, it’s important to soak up every second and make the most of it. It’s scary to surrender to the unknown, but it’s powerful to not give into my toxic vices anymore’.”- She continued, “I decided to make the Grim Reaper a love interest in a dark rom-com-style tale. Throughout the visuals, I’m seen in a therapist's office explaining this complicated relationship as if describing a scorned lover. The videos unfold a surrealist version of my life story. He stalks me, and eventually even proposes marriage, and I leave him at the altar and run away. It ends with me and Death in couples therapy. I wanted the music to feel cinematic, like the soundtrack of a movie.”
She added, “I thought, ‘How do I cope with the fact I embrace life so much now that I have a fear of losing it?’ There’s a bit of dark humor, because I wanted to artistically portray what it’s like to live with this shadow following me. If you have struggled with depression, anxiety, or addiction, you can listen to this and maybe find pieces of your own story.” -
MOTHICA explained about some tracks for the album.
“Another High”
“When I stop one habit, I find new vices to indulge in to keep my mind busy. Some are definitely healthier than others. And I always joke that I wish I was addicted to exercising and sunshine instead of the things that are bad for me.”
“Doomed”
“I think 'Doomed' is a sibling of my song 'Forever Fifteen.' It’s a melancholy ballad and has this shoegaze influence at the end of the song that swells up with intensity.
I’ve heard people talk about gifted child syndrome, or about feeling like a disappointment compared to the accolades they were given as a young kid and I didn’t know other people felt the same way. I was a smart kid with a bright future, and sometimes I feel like my depression sabotaged some of that light I had. In the second verse, I open up about my experience in my church youth group and my abusive youth pastor.
When I was just coming out of middle school, I was awkward and insecure and I hoped church would be a safe place to make friends but I was taking advantage of at my most vulnerable. I wish I could go back and protect myself from some of the things I went through, and it was incredibly therapeutic to recreate my teenage bedroom for the music video.
I casted my friend to play a younger version of me, adorned in 2009 emo warped tour era posters, and show this angsty misunderstood girl. I am terrified to put this song out but I showed the ending to my therapist and she teared up so I felt like this was an important song to lead the album with. It feels like a small sliver of my origin story.”
“Curiosity Killed the Moth”
“I thought of the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' on the way to a session with David Burris and Alexandra Veltri, and we twisted it to be about a moth. Like a moth to a flame. Icarus flying too close to the sun. I've always wanted to write a song about moths, but of course, it being my namesake that felt like a daunting task. I wanted every song to feel like it was from a soundtrack since I knew I was going to do a music video for every song, and so it turned into this dark cinematic feeling that I really love.”
“Red”
“After releasing Nocturnal, which had more of a heavier influence, I knew I wanted to include a rock song. In the narrative of the album, I wanted younger me to go to a rock show of future me, which is obviously impossible in reality, but it represents all the music I grew up listening to and what I’d later be inspired by. My buddy Nick Sadler and I wrote this together to be this rock-inspired anthem that teenage me would’ve loved, despite the lyrics being so self-destructive.”
“The Reaper”
“I was listening to a lot of movie soundtracks when I was writing this album, like the synthwave in the movie 'Drive'. I wanted to write an upbeat love song you could dance to. I rarely write about relationships or love, but this one was a fun twist with the subject being my infatuation with the grim reaper. Lyrically, I try to rationalise that he's a good guy and it became this more lighthearted song of the record that is unlike anything I've ever released.
I invited dozens of my friends to be in the music video, where I sung the song in 2x speed so you saw this slow motion of a neon-lit club around me, and there's some humour in there like the grim reaper teaching me how to play pool or my friend dancing on his scythe like its a pole.”
“Toxins”
“Toxins is the first song that made the record, since I originally wrote it for a Halloween release in 2022. I loved the image of a spider singing to its freshly caught prey. It took on a new meaning with the grim reaper as this stalker or dark shadow that followed me around, even when I made strides to get better like going to therapy or getting sober. The analogue synths David Burris put in the chorus definitely inspired the sound of the record, taking influence from the darkwave genre.”
“Mirage”
“At one point, this record was taking a classic western inspired direction but I cut most of those songs. I love slide guitar, old church bells, and that spaghetti western influence you’d hear in a Tarantino movie. But being from Oklahoma, I always stayed away from country adjacent sounds because it’s all I ever heard on the radio.
I heard about this idea in therapy I wanted to write about. People imagine achieving their goals will bring them happiness, like this still image in their mind of ‘once I get this, i’ll be happy forever’. But emotions aren’t permanent, it could just be a mirage of water in the desert. So this is my spin on western imagery as a Mothica song. The fans heard a snippet and nicknamed it my yeehaw-thica song.”
Photo by Paige Strabala - source : Apple Music
