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SOPHIE’s (very sadly to say) posthumous, eponymous album features 16 tracks of era-defining pop music chiselled from nerve-queering sound design and peerless songcraft, all faithfully finished up by sibling Benny Long and many friends. Tears in the dance indeed…
As expected, even years after her tragic passing, in Athens at the start of 2021, it ruins us to write, R.I.P. lass; such was the impact of SOPHIE’s music on all our lives over the past decade. The contemporary pop sphere was hers for the taking, after setting the template with a string of club diamonds and game-changing productions for the likes of her gen’s leading popstar, Charli XCX, during the 2010’s. But here we are, and ’SOPHIE’ is at least an ideal epitaph to their legacy. Completed by SOPHIE’s sibling Benny Long from her studio stems, arrangements, and notes, we’ll never know if it’s exactly what she intended, but Benny and the team have done her proud with a near-immaculate album that highlights their strengths in placing visionary, techgnostic levels of production nous at the service of quim-quivering, play it again (ad infinitum) dance pop pearls that evince the strongest feels from ‘floor to bedroom and cans.
With clear-eyed suss the album is arranged with a cadence that sucks you in, squeezes all the glands, and slaps from start to end. Aside from the slightly overlong, deferred gratification of ‘The Dome’s Protection’ ft. Nina Kraviz, it’s trimmed with the pop concision we hoped for, and does not shirk on the delicious goop, synthetic psychoacoustic space, propulsive programming and wipe clean textural finesse we’ve been led to expect. The beat-less cinematic void of ‘Intro (The Full Horror)’ feels like an appropriately elegiac start, before the party begins with her rudely detuned take on up-to-the-second pop-rap in the aching bass discord of ‘Rawwwwww’ ft. Jozzy, and ‘Plunging Asymptote’ stars a stentorian Julianna Huxtable in a rotor-bladed rave maelstrom, establishing a see-saw sequence that sees it thru to the ketty stagger of its alien coda ‘Love Me Off Earth’ with Doss.
Big moments are shelled in the perhaps disapointing previous singles, the arena-sized pomp of ‘Reason Why’ with Kim Petras, and electro-house drip of ‘Berlin Nightmare’ ft. Evita Manji, who also lights up the Andalusian pony power of ‘Gallop’, up there for NRG levels with ‘Elegance’, yet the most affective cuts are the purest pop pieces. SOPHIE’s long-time muse Hannah Diamond shines on ballad ‘Always and Forever’, and the deep forward pop of ‘Exhilarate’ with Bibi Bourelly echoes SOPHIE’s best for Charli, whilst ‘My Forever’ dials it right down to a slow shiver of dembow bop in key with the greatest Swedish synth pop from the ‘80s thru ‘00s that clearly spurred SOPHIE in the first place.
We can only marvel at SOPHIE’s iconic and statuesque body of work for eons to come. And safe to say we never expected the shy, floppy fringed character who used to drop off club fliers - the best we’ve ever seen - in our shop (P’neck) to leave such an enduring, life-affirming impact on modern music at large. Always the quiet ones, eh? <3
NEW / Released in 2024
Tracklist:
A1 Intro (The Full Horror)
A2 Rawwwwww
A3 Plunging Asymptote
A4 The Dome's Protection
B1 Reason Why
B2 Live In My Truth
B3 Why Lies
C1 Do You Wanna Be Alive
C2 Elegance
C3 Berlin Nightmare
C4 Gallop
C5 One More Time
D1 Exhilarate
D2 Always And Forever
D3 My Forever
D4 Love Me Off Earth
