Album Review: Maude Latour's Sugar Water
Latour's first full-length album is a triumph.
Maude Latour is one of the few musical artists whose discography I love all the way through; her 2019 Starsick EP was a significant part of my quarantine soundtrack, and each new release (Strangers Forever EP in 2021, 001 in 2022, Twin Flame in 2023) has had a similar impact. Needless to say, I awaited her first full-length album—Sugar Water, which released this past Friday—with great expectation. Beloved, she has not disappointed.
The first three tracks (two of them singles from the album) are full throttle, high energy, each of them pristine pop projectiles; they do not flow into each other smoothly, but follow like three strikes. “Officially Mine” begins with a jittery piano sample that cuts out suddenly, then returns with a beat to give it a backbone. The lyrics bask in the intensity of romance. Latour has a knack for the unexpected—in this track, cliches like “loving you is dangerous” and “I’ll never be the same” are followed by a bewildering “they’ll write Bibles about us forever.” The chorus is made for blasting in the car, windows down. “Go! go! go!” she shouts over exuberant explosions of synth. The last words still manage to be tender: “I made a wish last night / you were officially mi-i-i-ine,” the last word spread out into four notes.
If “Officially Mine” verges on saccharine (“super sweet!”), “Cursed Romantics” explores the darker side of infatuation—the inevitable heartbreak. She tosses her voice up into the high notes and sinks luxuriously into the low, while background vocals sigh: “What do I do when they call me ‘crazy’ / ‘cause I’m obsessive when you call me ‘baby’ / your love is poison and nobody can save me / oh no!” This romance can only end in disaster, but it is full speed ahead. “You’re my new religion,” she sings to in the chorus, and piles up hyperbolic descriptions of this star-crossed love: “addiction,” “collision,” “tragedy,” “catastrophe.” Very camp. A few seconds of piano before the second verse adds to the drama, as well as the key line: “violent delights have violent ends.” Despite it all, she remains painfully optimistic: “I hope we never break up!”
Track three, “Too Slow,” is the third “go!” foretold by “Officially Mine.” It begins with Latour’s distorted vocals in what might well be described as a series of caws. Pure energy. The verses are delivered in a series of high-paced melodies with barely a breath in between the words, offering a delicious challenge to commit them to memory: “all the girls are getting in my car, do their makeup on the highway / rolling ‘till they candy flip reversing out the driveway.” Pedal to the metal. I am obsessed with the voice sample that precedes the chorus: “Samantha get in the fucking car!” The chorus lyrics continue over a powerful beat I imagine would be perfect for walking the runway (or a killer drag performance): “you’re living too sloooooow,” the last word drawn out in exasperation and exaggerated slowness.
But slow down she does, and over the next two tracks, we get a better sense of the heartbreak lurking somewhere in the haze. Distortion and reverb is everywhere in “Whirlpool,” from the beginning hum that slowly lifts, evoking the sound of a tape recorder rewinding, to the chorus, in which Latour’s voice sounds like it is coming over a megaphone, bolstered by a crunchy guitar (it reminds me of one of her earlier singles, “I am not the sun”). A simple drum beat in the verses, while Latour croons lazily about going on long flights, cloud watching, picking four leaf clovers. It is a smoke break, a little space to breathe and reflect on life: “the difference between loss and love / is only letters and the drugs you take / but I’m hoping I don’t smoke it all away / ‘cause pain illuminates.” Sure, maybe the romance was cursed. But no matter now. In this moment, she is content just to relax in the water: “oh, I let the current take the control / surrender to the water unknown.”
The high continues in the titular track. “Whirlpool” was a relaxing high; “Sugar Water” is psychedelic. She spends the verse listing various stressors: getting distracted, “old friends trapping me / sucking all my energy,” the emotional armor that she has to keep on “even with the family.” All she wants to do is spend the day “chilling with my girl in peace”! A mantra grounds her: “you’re a precious life form / destined to be shimmering, glistening.” This is echoed in the frequent electronic shimmering sound (no other way I can describe it) that adorns her insistent question, “Can you spit sugar water straight into my mouth?” She saves her most vulnerable musings for the last seconds, delivered in a delicate falsetto: “Sweet like sugar cubes, I'm kinda still in love with you / you told me not to think about it so I thought I'd sing about it / I'm crushed once again, I wish you were in my head.”
In “Comedown” the distortion is mostly gone, the high has faded, and Latour has emerged from the water with vivid memories of what used to be. It is a nostalgia trip, relishing the memories of first love—and it begins a series of reminiscences that takes up the next four tracks as well. Her voice in the opening seems thin and far away, coming from the past. “You were my first true love / you gave me all my first drugs,” she sings, and we sense that this “you” has shaped the trajectory of her life, for better or worse. Especially moving is the role mind-altering substances play in these memories, the very substances that have perhaps helped her to escape at times. The two of them were “always getting high on the roof” together; they were delighted, when they ventured to the liquor store at sixteen, to not be carded by the cashier. “Why am I still so broken-hearted?” she cries out in the chorus, whose lush, atmospheric synth contrasts with the more subdued verses.
Another bittersweet memory in “Summer of Love,” although more hopeful. The feeling of infinite possibility, even as the season ends: “We can have it all / you won't have to try / you can be yourself / you can be whatever you want / anything is real.” She recalls the moment she met this old flame, the meet-cute, the building tension until the moment was right. It is a memory that still haunts the end of summer: “you’re the only thing I think about with summer ending.” The pre-chorus is rapid-fire, a tongue-twister seeking resolution in a heartwarming final kiss. The meandering melody of the chorus feels classic, skipping hand-in-hand, a happily-ever-after: “Now I'm calling a taxi / kissing me in the backseat / you and me in the summer of love.”
Hope is resurrected in a ballad; in “Save Me,” we get the sense that time has shown Latour that she had something real all those years ago. “I am standing outside of your old apartment,” she begins, with what sounds like church bells in the background. She is crying outside the door, perhaps uncertain if the person to whom she is singing even lives there anymore; she has made a pilgrimage, as if to a grave. “Let’s finish what we started.” She is invested, convinced that she has found the answer to the question of her life: “you made be believe / believe in something real,” she pours her heart out, and “you make me complete / I can’t change how I feel.” She offers all her tender expectation in the chorus, full of gliding, breathy high notes in long arcs: “‘cause you could save me / I was hoping that you could save me.” It is a prayer in the Bible Latour told us would be written in “Officially Mine.”
A prayer, then another memory this time masquerading as a mystic vision. She sings softly, like she is recounting it for a friend in her bedroom late at night. Who knows if the girl mentioned in “Save Me” is the same as the one in “Cosmic Superstar Girl,” but if so, she is not only Latour’s savior, but also her guiding light: “I had a vision of the North Star / she picked me up in her parent’s car.” Perhaps it is also the same girl from “Summer of Love”: “it was over by the end of summer / I'll never be the same as who I was before I loved her.” Regardless, she is mourning lost love again, and we learn that this particular relationship had truly ended in tragedy, catastrophe, a collision of sorts: “she met a boy on the internet / it's been three weeks since she left me.” She wistfully summarizes the effect this heartbreak has wrought with a timeless lesson: “some nights change your whole heart in a minute.”
The sound of fingers strumming a harp fades in slowly to start “7 (interlude),” followed by soft chords on a piano, and finally Latour’s voice comes in almost as a whisper. It seems that now she has come to terms; she sings of her romantic interest’s new love (“I told you not to wait and you fell in love / I hear she’s beautiful”) as well as an anticipation of her own “sweetheart” seven years in the future, still secretly cherishing what they had together. It seems the inevitability of the end is mutually recognized. Latour’s voice grows bolder as she urges them to make the most of their last moments together: “Baby, if it really is goodbye / can I just tell you that I had the time of my life?… / and if we only have tonight / can you kiss me like it's fine?” The appearance of the title phrase is a fitting conclusion for everything so far: “so I'll just love you harder / taste it all like sugar water.”
“Infinite Roses” begins with what sounds like a stuttering sample of trumpets and a renewal of energy—triumphant. The song seems to be a testament to the healing power of friendship with Mabel, a roommate with whom Latour goes “goes road tripping, driving south of the Bay” for a much-needed day at the beach: “so we pull up to the coast running straight to the waves / yeah it's blue and it's freezing and I'm feeling the change.” It seems Mabel is an excellent friend, who is not frightened away by Latour’s dark thoughts and who knows how to provide care for her in heartbreak. Life has been heavy lately, and they both need to, as the saying goes, stop and smell the roses—“infinite fucking roses,” Latour belts out in an exuberant cascade of notes. And with the last lines comes another mystical vision: “all I see for miles is roses / and then there’s you.” The roses are everywhere.
Latour’s voice is trance-like over piano and a drum beat in the verses of “Bloom” as she heaps metaphors upon the nameless “you” in cataphatic rapture: “you are a world / you are a pathway / you are a gem / you are a scripture.” Who is this “you”? A romantic interest or a precious friend (is it Mabel from the previous track, who is herself a “flower”)? Latour is effusive, singing about how this person is “so lovely” in a lengthy, celebratory refrain. “If I could be anywhere, I’d still pick your room / it’s a portal to the ocean of blue,” the last words once more accompanied by the striking of bells. Could this be the security she has been searching for all along? At the end of language, she reaches for impossible heights in her praise: “baby, you're God.” It almost feels like the religious imagery that evokes that first bewildering line in “Officially Mine” demands that you to start the whole album over again.
Sugar Water is a triumph, a celebration of the romantic impulse and of giving oneself over fully and irrevocably to life with all its pains and joys, thorns and roses. It is an excellent addition to Maude Latour’s already impressive discography. While she certainly already has a dedicated fan base, I don’t know why she is not a thousand times more popular; she deserves it!
Okay, I'll check it out...