Video premiere: Mating Ritual, ‘Future Now’

Kevin Bronson on June 26th, 2019

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Don’t let those big white cowboy hats fool you. And don’t be deceived by the meme-disguised-as-an-album-title. Mating Ritual are engaged in serious business — and in the case of their new album “Hot Content,” that is making pop music that at least raps on the door of today’s cultural zeitgeist.

Brothers Ryan and Taylor Lawhon are doing it in a most unusual fashion, for pop acts. They are making albums. In fact, they are on a mission to release five in five years, and “Hot Content” is their third, following 2017’s “How You Gonna Stop It?” and 2018’s “Light Myself on Fire.” The duo, who got their start as KO KO back in 2012 and changed their name to Pacific Air after getting a deal with Republic Records, are releasing music independently, on an imprint founded by Ryan. It was he who started Mating Ritual as a solo project after his brother left music for a time to go back to school.

Mating Ritual dash through a lot of related styles on “Hot Content,” all rooted in the ’80s: straight-up synth-pop, punky New Wave, urgent electro-rock (see, especially, “Good God Regina It’s a Bomb”). They get squishy with wink on “U.N.I.” and “Stupid Romantic Things” and close the album with the chillwavey “Game.” They take on toxic masculinity on “Boys Don’t Have to Be Boys.” And in “Future Now,” they go on a generational rant, which may or may not be interpreted as dripping with irony. It’s a bitch being young and poor, to have a dad that doesn’t make enough money, to have to work and wait to enjoy a better life. “We want the future now,” Ryan cries. Is it cowboy wisdom to caution that you should be careful what you wish for?

The Nick Kova-directed video for the song shows Mating Ritual delivering their message through the haze.

||| Watch: The video for “Future Now”