Toronto’s Mother Tongues were an early discovery of this blog and the first concert I went to in over two years, in Fall 2021 during a small break in pandemic closures. They made their recorded debut in Summer of 2020 with the trippy psychedelic multi-hyphenate pop of the Everything You Wanted EP, and now return – with the lineup trimmed down to the core duo of Lukas Cheung and Charise Aragoza – with their full-length debut, Love In a Vicious Way, out July 21.

Previewing the album and commenting specifically on the title, Cheung offers:

It’s an exploration of the darker ways we love, the parts with teeth. It possesses you, it’s a pit you fall into. Love overtakes you, this record is about surrendering to that feeling.

Lukas Cheung, Mother Tongues
Mother Tongues @ Wavy Haze

The first taste of the new record comes from single “A Heart Beating”, which comes with an appropriately trippy video and is described as:

A goth dream-pop rocker, the song sonically splits the difference between Alvvays and The Cure; the verses speak to how we can find ourselves lost in feedback loops of regret and longing, while the chorus is a hypnotic, repeating response that calls you back into your body (“A heart beating, inside an animal”)

Mother Tongues @ Wavy Haze