When Sorry released their second album Anywhere But Here almost exactly three years ago, the reviewer was in the middle of a long, difficult breakup. Its heartache songs – oscillating between grief, anger and despair – became the perfect soundtrack to a personal drama. The album was played endlessly and became a meaningful part of that biography. It therefore feels almost unfair to assess Cosplay under entirely different (emotional) circumstances, because it is unlikely to attain the same personal significance.
Yet by the time the first chorus of the opener »Echoes« arrives, the familiar Sorry magic is right there again, and you find yourself chanting »Echo, I love you« along with it. Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen continue blurring genre boundaries with intent, moving from industrial stomp (»Love Posture«) to the rare, delicate fragility of »Antelope«. Whether string arrangements, snippets of conversation, samples, lo-fi beats, birdsong or rap interludes – the palette is as kaleidoscopic as ever, even if their indie-rock pastiche now feels a touch more streamlined, as though Sorry were indeed cosplaying “real” pop stars.
The allusive lyrics leave plenty of room for profanities, inside jokes and nods to past work. Yet despite all the masquerade, humour and misdirection, it is always clear when Sorry mean it and show themselves vulnerable: in the emotional core of the album, »Life in This Body«, which with lines such as »Everybody changes – I have loved every version of you« once again provides a reliable conduit for tears.
