Kevin Bronson on February 11th, 2019

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Brother duo Mating Ritual have announced that their new album, “Hot Content,” will be out May 10. It’s the follow-up to 2017’s “How You Gonna Stop It?” and last year’s “Light Myself on Fire” and the third of five albums that Mating Ritual plan to release in a five-year span.

Such prolificacy isn’t common these days (except in certain garage-rockers), so credit Ryan Marshall Lawhon — who founded Mating Ritual as a solo project before brother Taylor came on board — for continuing to find sustenance at the font of 1980s pop and New Wave influences. Last fall’s single “October Lover” taps into the more urgent, dancier side of that era, while the latest single “Falling Back” coasts sublimely into the familiar pop waters of thorny and often numbing relationships.

The album, Ryan says, is “named after an Instagram joke turned meta,” and while he concedes it “looks and sounds like our most playful album yet,” much of content is far from jokey. See, for instance, “Boys Don’t Have to Be Boys.”

“‘Hot Content’ [is] at its heart is a sad person,” he says. “While several songs deal with the current climate of the world, fear of change and toxic masculinity, it’s mostly a relationship record. Being in a committed relationship is hard. Finding that balance between excitement and boredom, passion and anger can be difficult, but the fact that you’ve found someone you love, and they love you back, is special and worth waking up every day for.”

||| Stream: “Falling Back”

||| Also: Stream “October Lover”