by David Wilikofsky
Sorry seem like they’ve been around for ages. First gaining attention in 2017 alongside fellow London acts like Black Midi and Shame, they’ve steadily dropped singles and Youtube-based mixtapes in the intervening years. While those other bands released debut albums and became the faces of the London underground in America, Sorry has remained relatively below the radar on our side of the pond. Now signed to venerable institution Domino Records, they’re about to unleash their debut album on the world. If there’s any justice, this album should catapult them to the same marquee status enjoyed by their contemporaries.
Sorry, as a band, are a product of the era of easy digital access to music. On 925, they’ve taken elements of many important UK bands of the recent past and put them in a blender. The references start on opener “Right Round the Clock,” which riffs on the lyrics of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World”. As I listened to the album, tracks brought to mind the glam swagger of Suede (“Starstruck”), the spaced out ecstasy of Spiritualized (“Ode to Boy”), and the electronic experimentation of Radiohead circa Kid A (“Lies (Refix)”). Despite containing so many styles, the record never sounds like a stale pastiche. By re-contextualizing and sewing these disparate influences together they’ve managed to make a record that both sounds totally original and comfortingly familiar.
It’s hard to understate how massive the band sounds here. These songs feel three dimensional, with subtle studio textures deftly applied. “Snakes,” which appeared on their first mixtape as a more barebones demo, benefits from the increased production values. The song, about the narrator’s ex, now exudes a sense of melancholy thanks to swelling strings in the background. A newer song like “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” benefits from the same kind of attention; the song talks about a night the narrator spent with a washed up musician, and the staccato horns in the background add to the debaucherous sleaze of the track. Compared with their earlier recordings, everything here feels more sonically precise. This is an album where all tracks reward close and repeated listening, slowly pulling you into their world.
Too often the music press with hype a band to the point that they can never meet the unrealistically high expectations placed on them. Sorry could have easily have become another victim of the hype machine, but they’ve delivered with 925. I can’t wait to see where they’ll go from here.