COSPLAY

What they lack in quantity, they make up for in a sonic prolificness, an unwillingness to be tied down to any one genre, or really any multi-hyphenate collection thereof. On their first two records for Domino, they race through grungey rock, glitchy trip-hop, twee pop, theatrical skeleton music, and plenty more besides. With Cosplay, they show no signs of settling down, though this project has somewhat of a throughline. Its stylistic restlessness means it’s, by design, a chaotic experience, but the themes of longing and uncertainty, plus a few musical motifs, give the album a new level of cohesion.

As the title suggests, there’s a performative element to much of Sorry’s music, particularly in the vocal style of Asha Lorenz. On the swinging, profane “Candle”, she’s low in the mix and reserved in delivery, coming forward every now and again for profanity-laced displays of vulnerability. “Today Might Be The Hit” is a janky and jagged punky sprint, with bursts of guitars and “yada yada”s punctuating a breathless two minutes and change.

They’re a band totally confident in their ability to go ostentatious and even goofy, as heard on highlight “Waxwing”. One of the densest and most dramatic cuts in the band’s career, it’s a retro goth-pop blast, with Lorenz’s vocals chopped up and sprinkled all over the place, a synth line that’s downright Transylvanian, some rare guitar heroics, and an unexpected nod to Toni Basil for the chorus.

Sorry are no mere irony merchants, though. Anywhere But Here’s

"There's So Many People That Want to Be Loved" proved the band’s

ability to write properly lump-in-throat inducing slices of sincerity,

and lead single and opener “Echoes” sees them once again cutting the

shit and laying it on the line. “I think we’re losing now, I think we’re

fucking it up / But it felt so good when we were drifting in the dark”

Lorenz sings, before stripping down to the raw simplicity of the four

word, mantra like chorus. It’s a potent combination of melancholic and

incredibly catchy.

Best of all is closer “JIVE”, which is right up there with

the finest track Sorry have recorded to date. It’s a gargantuan,

hammering song with which to close the record, somewhere between club

banger and industrial monster. The tune goes up gradually through the

gears before shifting to the pounding extended outro. As guitars and

drums pound away, Lorenz repeats her mission statement, simultaneously

direct and strangely vague: “I wanna jive tonight, I wanna swing my hips

/ I wanna move like that but I only seem to move like this.” It’s a

lumbering, methodical freak out of a closer, made all the more powerful

for the LP’s quieter moments.

Sorry remain excitingly unfileable with their third and

likely best album to date. Simultaneously, though, they’re fast becoming

one of the most reliably exciting pop-indie-rock-whatever bands in the

UK today.