MOTHICA // Mothica Steps Into The Light On Her Engrossing Second Full-Length Album ‘Nocturnal’

It’s one thing to find momentary viral fame online; it’s entirely another to forge a lifetime of creating and recent TikTok stardom into ongoing matured creative outputs.

MORE: SUNK LOTO: No More Anxiety // STEEL PANTHER: Bringing The Debauchery Down Under REVIEWS: ALEXISONFIRE: Otherness // GREY DAZE: The Phoenix // JOYCE MANOR: 40 Oz. To Fresno // STAND ATLANTIC: F.E.A.R // YOURS TRULY: is this what i look like? // OUTRIGHT: Keep You Warm // MOTHICA: Nocturnal

First garnering significant attention both on SoundCloud and TikTok via her songs Starchild and VICES respectively, American nu gen ingenue Mothica, aka McKenzie Ellis, has been immersed in music far beyond her more recent stardom, surpassing the likes of Harry Styles on the iTunes charts back in 2020 and going on to release a string of EPs, multiple singles and her debut full-length Blue Hour also in 2020.

An artist equally enamoured by raw storytelling alongside elements of rock, emo and electronica welded into her dark pop sorcery, Mothica has never shied away from difficult and severely personal subject matters along the way. Smashing the preconceived taboos of mental health struggles while finding solace via online communities through sharing her art and her own stories, Mothica began independently releasing music in earnest at the age of 18. And while her debut album Blue Hour was an insatiably anticipated release, and one that journeyed Mothica’s challenging journey towards sobriety and picking up emotional pieces along the way, it’s in 2022 that a bold, ambitious and entirely bewitching version of Mothica emerges from the metaphorical chrysalis into full-blown stylistic and emotional self-awareness on her sophomore album Nocturnal, due out on 1 July via Heavy Heart Records, her imprint with Rise Records/BMG. 

“We’re throwing the whole kitchen sink at this one,” says Mothica, grinning from ear to ear. “But it’s funny, the one thing that really came through when I was listening to the whole album … I was like: wow! I’m extremely self-deprecating! And I talk about being self-destructive and about chaos, they’re just some of those things that I seem to write about instinctually. But when you experience it all together on the album … I also realised I’m very self aware about it!”

Balancing hard-hitting thematics and dusky aural hues throughout, Mothica’s darker leanings repeatedly bubble to the surface on Nocturnal. But rather than purely wallow in gloom and despair, Nocturnal also offers ongoing moments of hope and unbridled empowerment with a fresh twist; a conscious dichotomy for Mothica with her present-day creations.

“I always try to inject a silver lining into these songs,” Mothica explains, “especially with the genre, or genres, that I’m around. A lot of alt-pop and alt-rock, whatever you want to call it, there’s a lot of the ongoing sentiments ‘I’m a loser’ or ‘I’m trash’. I personally don’t want to put that out into the world, I want there to be this self-acceptance, and an attempt to become better. I try to inject that into my songs, even though a lot of them come from really dark places of feeling hopeless. But I always ask myself: how can I, through writing these songs, find a solution for myself in them? And that solution does eventually come later.”

From neon-drizzled moments like Nocturnal’s very own title-track to futuristic industrial flavours on Sensitive and pop-punk flair on Casualty, Nocturnal presents as an oscillating smorgasbord of varying and divergent stylings. But for Mothica, her previous stream of consciousness writing style has more recently given way to open-ended methods of creation, with Nocturnal’s individual tracks evolving simply from song titles into expanded interpretations of the various track names.

But all of the bedtime stories that I knew, or all of the examples of love that I’ve known: they’ve all been bad
[ Mothica ]

“I used to write where I’d start out with a stream of consciousness, whatever came to mind,” Mothica reveals. “But over time and especially with Nocturnal, I now usually start with a song title, or what I like to call the ‘punchline’. For example, with the track Bedtime Stories, I knew I wanted to write a song called Bedtime Stories. From there, I’d go to a session and think: how can I spin this? Is it a bedtime story about me and growing up? Then it became more about all these famous loves, like Romeo and Juliet and these classic love stories.” 

“But all of the bedtime stories that I knew, or all of the examples of love that I’ve known: they’ve all been bad,” Mothica laughs wryly. “It’s that thing of wanting that fairytale, but the reality being very different. As the song grew, we knew we wanted a twinkly little lullaby sound with it – and the rest was history. But it all came from the title!”

Equally balancing her tactile songs on Nocturnal with disarming spoken word sleep tape segues via a Mothica-created character, a mysterious luna month named Moth Man, the album also tackles Mothica’s own difficult history with sleep alongside other suitably shadowy textures. But it’s not just writing music that tickles Mothica’s creative flow, with the extension of her accompanying visuals levelling up to new heights this time round as well, co-directing all of her music videos and overseeing every ounce of visual output accompanying Nocturnal.

“I’ll always have a crazy video idea in my head,” Mothica says of conjuring the lush videos for the new album. “But it’s all very dependent on the budget, usually I don’t get to fully enact the amount of things I have in my head. For example, my song Nocturnal: in my head I see it as this Matrix-level action scene – but that’s just not where we’re at financially right now [laughs]. But we made a really awesome video for that, and first and foremost I always want the songs and the production to match the lyrics. I’ve worked with some awesome artists and designers along the way, but I’m also so hands on. I love even building the props for music videos, I think I’ll always be super detail-oriented because I just have to be busy all the time!”

One of the young artists blazing a trail for the next genre-defying generation of artists via the nu gen movement, a hybrid take on rock fusing metal, emo, pop, hip hop and quite literally everything in between, Mothica cohesively straddles boundless innovation with effortless commercial approachability. But while her releases are consistently modern and stylistically fluid, it’s also on the future-facing Nocturnal that Mothica seamlessly and simultaneously returns to the musical roots that shaped her.

Reminiscing on her earlier listening, Mothica shares: “I went through so many phases, I had MySpace, and there were so many bands on there I still love bands like Never Shout Never, the Millionaires and that whole era of music. Then through that I got into the hardcore scene, there was my local hardcore scene, but I was also listening to A Day To Remember, The Devil Wears Prada, My Chemical Romance and Paramore, they really changed a lot for me. Then in high school I got into more electronic and pop music. Nocturnal was me, kind of, revisiting all of that, because back then I wasn’t in a band and I didn’t really have guitars to play in my music and I didn’t have any of these harder elements. What I like about the new generation, or whatever you want to call it now: there’s no rules, everyone’s experimenting with so many sounds. And I wanted to see what it would sound like if I tried that with this album.”

Increasingly unable to be pigeonholed, Mothica may be on the cusp of releasing her brand new second album Nocturnal, but she is already firmly looking to the horizon and beyond, with a horde of new ideas raring to go – including a very on-brand holiday special potentially on the way.

“I’m trying to work on something special for Halloween,” Mothica says, grinning. “I haven’t done a lot of dedicated things to that era, I try to just say that every day is Halloween! The way I run with my life is that I’m already thinking about what I want to put out next. I’m rekindling my excitement for Nocturnal right now, but I’ve already started the very itsy bitsy blueprint of my next album. That’s going to be more in my world of videos and directing, but it’s definitely not going to be a continuation of Nocturnal. It’s going to be more about me.”

Noctural is out on 1 July via BMG.