Sorry - COSPLAY

Across their two previous albums, Sorry have leaned into an intricately dense and claustrophobic sound that largely avoids comparison. It’s a feat that has seen them reach across the musical spectrum in terms of festival appearances and support slots, the most prominent of which - joining Fontaines DC for a double-header of shows - displaying just how broadly the term ‘indie’ can stretch. Third album ‘COSPLAY’, then, doubles down in its broader take on Sorry’s distinctive style, delivering something altogether more unsettling and eerie - and inarguably beautiful. If 2020’s breakthrough ‘925’ and 2022’s ‘Anywhere But Here’ reeked of debauched, dark city nights, here they venture into the otherworld.

From the immediate dissociative spiral of ‘Echoes’, ‘COSPLAY’ is driven by a dark marching tone, brilliantly pausing for its unexpected surprises: the slow co-vocals of ‘Life Is This Body’; the mid-‘00s indie riffs of ‘Today Might Be The Hit’; or the hidden gem R&B sample on ‘Love Posture’. It lands heaviest in the industrial grind of ‘Waxwing’ or the paradoxical distortion of ‘JIVE’. That unnerving quality is compounded by its never-wavering forward trajectory, cemented as Asha Lorenz’s warped vocals appear forced to keep dancing in a sea of chaos on the album’s closing number. As it pushes to its final, swirling note, ‘COSPLAY’ lands as simultaneously their broadest and best album to date - unpredictable, unnerving and all-encompassing.