Where the vocals of Sorry’s Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen used to stand stark and alone, on the north London band’s second album, Anywhere But Here, they’re frequently buffeted by a wave of bubblegum backing vocals, framing bitter musings and anxious hooks in dreamlike oohs and ghostly aahs. These wordless accompaniments, lifted right from the classic pop songwriting toolbox, might have once seemed too conventional for a band like Sorry. Their breakthrough songs were better known for growls, gulps, and electronic gurgles. But on Anywhere But Here, they fold these gestures toward pop history into their music with reverent sincerity, without losing their ability to surprise.
With her tongue characteristically in cheek, Lorenz said in a 2021 interview that the band was tilting toward “more song-y, ’70s arrangements,” and elsewhere they’ve cited the influence of songwriters like Carly Simon and Randy Newman. Anywhere But Here—which was produced by Lorenz and O’Bryen along with Bristol producer/engineer Ali Chant and Portishead’s Adrian Utley—might sit more comfortably alongside the punk-pop of Mica Levi’s Micachu and the Shapes, or Alex G’s off-kilter romanticism, than “You’re So Vain.” But it manages to weave classic techniques into the band’s strange world with a humor that never skids into distanced irony. The results make for some of Sorry’s most accomplished songs to date.
Sorry have long toyed self-consciously with musical clichés, but on Anywhere But Here, their pastiches are injected with real pathos. “Screaming in the Rain” is a forlorn duet on which both O’Bryen and Lorenz sound genuinely vulnerable, their voices flickering gently over threadbare guitar and a gloomy piano outro. Lorenz, in particular, brings a bodiliness to her performances: There’s the long, ragged breath she takes after imagining someone else putting their arm around her ex in “Key to the City”; the alteration between haunted whispers and halted, plosive intonation on “Willow Tree”; the way, on “Again,” her voice dwindles as she sings, “The world shone like a chandelier/And I was lost for good.” These visceral details tell a story, even when she’s projecting a disaffected tone—as when she cries on “Key to the City,” “I don’t care!”
Likewise, the magic of Sorry’s instrumentation lies in the tiniest and most jarring details. They’ve always created a vast amount of space in their productions, letting the most incongruous and compelling elements take the foreground. The spare “Baltimore” starts off eerily, with a few lone jabs at piano, a creeping guitar riff, a wobble of bass. Like the strutting “Step,” it lurches back and forth between quieter verses and choruses that build to a loud and frantic conclusion.
There’s never enough time to get comfortable in a Sorry song; it can be tricky to predict what’s coming next. The album’s weakest cuts are those that deploy familiar motifs like the quirky strums and city-life observations of “There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved.” But at their best, Sorry wed hooky melodies and piercing earnestness with unsettling moments that shake you awake. Take the flourish of opera that adds drama to the downbeat “I Miss the Fool,” or the fact that “Closer” is less about physical or emotional intimacy than it is about feeling the slow creep of mortality (“Closer to the ether, closer to the worms,” Lorenz and O’Bryen sing sweetly in muted harmony). The jarring way they marry these unlikely elements, and their disarming lyricism, is often funny—but it’s never a joke. Where 925 was thrillingly inventive, but often kept the listener at a cautious remove, Anywhere But Here uses deeply felt storytelling and intimate vocals to usher us much closer.
