Luvcat is a hopeless romantic

Luvcat might only have a handful of songs out, but the Liverpool-born singer is accumulating quite the cult following. I witnessed it for myself during the artist’s mini-residency at London’s Hoxton Hall last month as part of her debut headline tour. Past the merchandise stand selling frilly thongs — each colour corresponding to the tarot-esque cover art of each of her singles — the candlelit theatre was filled with young people, stylish à la indie sleaze, who knew all the words to the three releases. The fourth, Love & Money, dropped at midnight on Valentine’s Day, exactly 12 hours before our interview. The tune recalls a whirlwind romance with a waiter, for whom the singer left her phone number on a napkin. “He was a filmmaker,” Luvcat tells me. “And I just had this idea of, you know, making a movie with him. That’s where the song came from.”

The 27-year-old singer, who recently supported The Libertines on tour, isn’t shy when it comes to recounting tales from her “wild life” — during our chat or within the lyrics of her songs. Combined with her knack for crafting metaphors, Luvcat’s cinematic approach to her existence makes her music so whimsical yet viscerally emotive all at once.

Scarlett Coughlan: There’s something really old-school romantic about your music and vibe. Does that come easily?

Luvcat: I’m naturally a hopeless romantic. I feel like those kinds of love stories are always the most charming — when they start in a crazy circumstance.

SC: That’s really clear in your lyrics — they’re genuinely immersive. Where does that knack for storytelling come from?

L:  Maybe just living a wild life — being young and having freedom, and documenting it. That’s all it really is. And then blending that with some fictional twists and metaphors. But it’s all rooted in real things that have happened to me. 

SC: I didn’t realise until your show that, as well as singing and songwriting, you play piano and guitar. Tell me about your musical background.

L: I saw an Avril Lavigne video on MTV when I was a kid and I wanted to play like her, so my grandad bought me a tiny electric guitar and a skateboard. But then my mum rang up the music school down the road and they said, “She should start by playing piano,” so that’s where it all began. I started when I was six and I just fell in love with the instrument. I stopped the lessons as soon as I could figure out how to accompany myself to sing and lay chords underneath. The poems that I was writing at the time were obsessive.

SC: Then, eventually, you became Luvcat. Where did that moniker come from?

L: The name came from The Lovecats, a song by The Cure. It’s a scratchy, slinky, cheeky little song, and I thought that it matched the music that I was making at the time.

SC: I read somewhere that Luvcat was “made somewhere between the south London pub circuit and underground clubs of Paris”. How do you think these places have influenced you?

L: I didn’t know anything about the south London music scene when I accidentally moved to Camberwell, strolled into a pub and fell in love with a local punk. Then he kind of introduced me to everyone that I now know — band members and stuff. Paris played an integral part because I’m always hanging out there, and a lot of the experiences I’ve had there have inspired the songs. Our first gig was out there on a boat.

SC: How did you start hanging out in Paris so much? It’s not like it’s just down the road.

L: I was just naturally drawn there. I don’t know, something inside me told me to go. And I have a lot of friends there, and I made more friends there, and lovers, and everything in between.

This excerpt was taken from HUNGER Issue 34: Fight Back. Stay tuned for the full story.