Following up, Anywhere But Here must be what Sorry sound like navigating newness. 925 was widely acclaimed for how comfortable it felt, how at home Sorry felt in all their experimentation and oddness, so it’s equally intriguing and entertaining to hear them somehow managing to push themselves out of a comfort zone already well beyond the usual.
Introspective, jaunty, flickering vignettes of London Town painted through a meandering first-person lens are no longer just a Libertines calling card. Sorry lead us by the hand through back alleys, secret green spaces, crowded bathrooms and bridges whilst employing a remarkable arsenal of evocative techniques. Laden with 7ths that take you straight to certain street corners (the moody bassline of “I Miss The Fool” or conversely, the coy escalations of “There’s So Many People That Want To Be Loved”, insistent mantras that descend across the album like a fog (the addictive repetition of each line of “Key To My City”).
The push and pull of Anywhere But Here spans every aspect of the record, too. There are fluctuations between sprawling, wistful energy and spiky, macro-focussed moments at every turn. The operatic inflections at the end of “I Miss The Fool” tumble straight into a fuzzy guitar line, two opposing worlds; similarly, the restrained creep of “Willow Tree” cascading into one of the album’s most straight up-and-down (well, as far as Sorry go) tunes “There’s So Many People That Want To Be Loved”. Sorry remind us of how exciting it feels to be musically challenged, by making sure there are enough hooks and hints to keep us on board throughout.
Though Anywhere But Here certainly sticks to the same playbook throughout, Sorry can’t be faulted for it. It’s a playbook they wrote from scratch after tearing up what they did last time. Every listen yields new life oozing from each beat - above all, Anywhere But Here feels like an album that will weather excellently as Sorry go onwards.
