North Londoners Sorry are set to release their hugely anticipated debut album ‘925’ via Domino on 27 March. Already favourites on 6 Music, bandmates Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen have worked together with co-producer James Dring to conjure up a variety of Lynchian-esque dream-pop songs inspired by everyone from Tony Bennett to Aphex Twin.
Talking of David Lynch, the album opener ‘Right Round the Clock’ feels like something from the Twin Peaks score with snippets of brass, jazzy moments and dual, ethereal vocals (‘She rolls around with an entourage, she’s all dolled up like a movie star’) before moving into a sound that falls somewhere between Ian Dury and Dry Cleaning as the band talk about this girl’s ‘fuck me eyes’ and discuss putting her in a personal movie in an attempt to make her real. ‘In Unison’ has more mystic tones and dark lyrics: ‘They fall asleep and drop like flies and it makes me cry’; ‘One day we’re here and one day we die’. ‘Snakes’ is more seductive and brooding in a style similar to Nadine Shah – and again it has a number of eye-opening lyrics about kissing and confused sex: ‘I never thought about you in your underwear because I didn’t really care what was under there’.
‘Starstruck’ has a funkier opening with Stones-style guitar riffs and jaunty Britpop vibes while album centrepiece ‘Rosie’ has a conversational tone that soon gets heated (‘I love you, Rosie’, ‘I need you, Rosie’, ‘Fuck you, Rosie’) and ‘Perfect’ moves into US-style indie with elements of Sleater-Kinney and Pavement – albeit with more vocal interplay: ‘It’s your choice, you know where the door is… You know I adore you’; ‘I’m perfect… You’re not worth it’. There are crooning vibes throughout the cinematic chamber pop of ‘As the Sun Sets’ while ‘Wolf’ has an anxiety pop feel with apocalyptic bass, while ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ has a sound somewhat akin to an avant-garde Nina Simone as the band talk about an experience with a ‘washed-up rock ‘n’ roll star’: ‘We fucked all night, stayed up late, felt my assets fall away’. ‘Heather’ sounds like The Carpenters playing Moldy Peaches songs, while the guitars are fired up on the grungey and distorted ‘More’: ‘Give me something to look at’; ‘Don’t give me too much, just give me enough’.
The band then take a turn into twee indie-pop on the penultimate ‘Ode to Boy’ (‘This is an ode for you, my boy. This is an ode for joy because there’s no joy’) while the record finishes with ‘Lies (Refix)’ – an intense and experimentally dark song with stream-of-consciousness lyrics: ‘Life feels like it’s just based on the weather and I make lies like we should be together’.
You will not be Sorry if you take the time to listen to ‘925’…
