This posthumous Sophie album is a let-down.
Sophie
albums have always been ahead of the curve. In fact, it feels like modern electronic
producers are still scrambling to imitate the synthetic clangs, bubbles and
squelches that Sophie was experimenting with on her 2015 album Product. On her 2018 album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, she pushed forward this sound even further to the point that I
found it almost too challenging (I’ve since come around and I now love it). I
assumed that her next project would be a step even further into the unknown. A
step beyond hyperpop (ultrapop? Nah, that already exists. Something even more alien).
Then the tragic news came that Sophie had died.
It's
sad when any musician dies young, but to lose a creative genius like Sophie was
devastating. I assumed that was end of her musical output and we’d never know
what she had planned next. But I was wrong – three years after her death, Sophie
has released a new album. According to her brother Benny Long, she was planning to release a new pop album (and after that an experimental album) at the time of her passing. This album is a carefully curated selection of some of the tracks she had spoken about releasing from those records. We’ll never know if
this is what Sophie would have wanted. But that’s the ethical dilemma that
haunts most posthumous albums.
The
new record is made up 16 tracks, which seem to be roughly separated into four
different sounding sections. The first quarter of the album is an avant-garde
section made up of time-stretched ambient pieces and spacey spoken word passages
that play out like sci-fi mediation music. This jarringly segues into the 'pop' section of the album, made up of radio-friendly songs with catchy guest vocals from the
likes of Kim Petras and Liz. We then get the rave section of the album (my
favourite part of the album), where the spotlight is placed on Sophie’s
production with minimal contributions from guest vocalists. The final leg could meanwhile be seen as another
radio-friendly pop section – sadly, with less memorable vocal performances.
The
problem with a lot of these songs is that they sound unfinished and aren't very innovative. There are some exceptions where we see a
glimpse into the producer's more forward-thinking side such as ‘Plunging Asymptote’ –
an excitingly unhinged composition that sounds like it’s been smuggled back in time from the year
2050 (It's a shame the vocals make it borderline unlistenable. Anyone got an instrumental version?). The whole rave section is also thrilling, with songs like ‘Elegance’
and ‘One More Time’ taking unpredictable twists and turns. However, the rest of
the tracklist is largely stuff we’ve heard before.
The ambient opener ‘Intro (The Full Horror)’ and fourth track ‘The Dome’s Protection’ both consist of the same time-stretched synth swells encountered on ‘Pretending’ (a track from her last album), with minimal attempt to develop each track. Songs like ‘Reason Why’ have some very catchy vocals, but production-wise we get nothing new from Sophie, except for the uncharacteristic 808 handclaps and wet mixing (clearly added in by another producer). Aside from the synth fart repeated throughout, ‘Exhilarate’ is meanwhile so generic that it almost doesn’t sound like a Sophie single at all.
I
guess we should be grateful that we were allowed to hear these tracks. If they
weren’t released, we’d always be left wondering what music was left locked away in the vault. And there are some good tracks here that I’m glad were
released (tracks 9 to 12 are bangers). I just can’t vibe with the whole
album. R.I.P. Sophie.
★★☆☆☆
TRACK TASTER: