Album Review: LØLØ - ‘god forbid a girl spits out her feelings’
LØLØ has always had the kind of lyrical instincts that feel like they’ve been prised straight from the Notes app at 2:14am, autocorrect off, emotions on fire. On, god forbid a girl spits out her feelings, the Toronto artist sharpens that impulse into something louder, brasher, and far more self-aware; an album that treats emotional oversharing not as a flaw but as fuel. If her debut was about numbing out the chaos, this second full-length finds her rolling around in it, glitter on her cheeks, guitar feedback in her hair, smiling through the damage.
The title track opens like a raised eyebrow. ‘god forbid a girl spits out her feelings!’ is all attitude and bite, a mission statement disguised as a hook-heavy alt-pop punch-up. There’s sarcasm here, but it isn’t hollow; it’s defensive, almost exhausted, like she’s pre-empting every criticism before it can land. The irony is that in doing so, she makes herself more exposed than ever. It’s a clever sleight of hand: confession dressed up as confrontation.
From there, LØLØ wastes little time tightening the screws. ‘me with no shirt on’ and the already familiar ‘the devil wears converse’ slot into her established universe of messy attraction and sharper-than-you-think songwriting. The production leans into glossy pop-rock, but there’s always something slightly frayed at the edges, guitars that feel just a little too loud, choruses that teeter on collapse before snapping neatly back into place. It mirrors the emotional logic of the record itself: controlled chaos, barely contained spirals.
One of the album’s standout moments arrives early with ‘dumbest girl in the world’, a track that weaponises self-deprecation until it circles back into something closer to self-preservation. It’s playful, almost cartoonish in its melodic bounce, but the lyrics land with a sting. LØLØ isn’t just laughing at herself; she’s interrogating the patterns she can’t quite break. The contrast between sugary hooks and bruised honesty is where she thrives, and here it feels fully dialled in.
That push-and-pull continues through ‘hung up on u’ and ‘delusional darling’, two tracks that sit comfortably in the album’s emotional middle. Both orbit obsession in different forms, post-breakup fixation, romantic denial, and the familiar habit of building entire narratives out of half-read messages and imagined glances. LØLØ doesn’t moralise any of it. Instead, she documents the mess with unnerving clarity, letting the contradiction stand: she knows better, and she does it anyway.
Mid-record highlight ‘the punisher’ sharpens things further. Built on jagged alt-rock textures and a performance that oscillates between restraint and eruption, it captures the compulsive ritual of digital post-breakup self-torture. The detail is almost uncomfortably precise, the kind of lyricism that makes you realise you’ve absolutely done the same thing and simply refused to admit it. There’s humour in it, but it’s the wince-inducing kind, the laugh-you-make-while-closing-the-tab kind.
Elsewhere, ‘007’ injects a flash of swagger, all distorted edges and spy-movie theatrics filtered through pop-punk sarcasm. It’s one of the record’s lighter touches, but even here there’s emotional double-dealing at play: desire tangled with suspicion, attraction laced with exit strategies. Nothing in LØLØ’s world is straightforward, not even the fun bits.
As the album progresses, tracks like ‘stuff like that’ and ‘whiskey & coke’ lean into a softer haze, but they’re never fully safe. Even the breezier moments feel like they’re glancing over their shoulder. ‘american zombie’ keeps the thematic thread alive, skewering emotionally unavailable partners with tongue firmly in cheek, while ‘boy who doesn’t want to’ slows things down into something more reflective, letting the hooks breathe rather than snap.
By the time ‘lobotomy & u’ arrives, the emotional tone has settled into something almost eerily calm. Stripped-back acoustics frame one of LØLØ’s most direct vocal performances, and the imagery cuts deep without needing volume to do the work. It’s less an ending than an exhale, an admission that clarity and confusion often live side by side.
What holds ‘god forbid a girl spits out her feelings’ together is not sonic reinvention, but emotional consistency. LØLØ isn’t trying to outgrow her hypersensitivity; she’s refining it, turning it into a coherent aesthetic language. At times, the uniformity of tone can blur the edges between tracks, but the payoff is a record that feels singular in voice and intent.
Where restraint gets mistaken for emotional intelligence, LØLØ opts out entirely, feeling too much, too loudly, and saying it exactly as it lands. It’s chaotic, occasionally unhinged, but never careless. Against the odds, it sticks the landing.
Words by Danielle Holian
