Sorry’s many disguises

Since the end of last year, as well as drip-feeding us new singles, Sorry have been playing surprise sets. There was the one at Moth Club billed as a secret headliner. There was another up north at Band on the Wall. It’s one of many forms of cosplaying they indulge in, but more importantly, it’s allowed the North London band to test-drive some of their newer material and develop it for the live context.

Against Sorry’s previous work, COSPLAY – their new album – stands as a simultaneous contrast and continuation. A project with a seemingly infinite number of influences, it dials up its subversion of pop culture folk heroes, as well as drawing from the corners of Lorenz’s mind. “It’s funny because we never really discuss specifically what things in pop culture we want to add in,” she says. “A lot of them really just stem from random memories, like a lot of it is just remembering something really intensely, but not really knowing why.” One example is on “Jetplane” where a sample of “Hot Freaks” by Guided by Voices is used, simply because bandmate Marco Pini once played it in the van. “It just stuck with me, and when [Louis and I] were coming to write this album, one of [the tracks] ended up just sounding like a twisted-up ‘Hot Freaks’, so we thought it was only fair to add it in.”

Another example of surrendering to their id in this way is the track “Waxwing”, where the band reimagines Mickey Mouse as a dark figure haunting someone’s imagination. “That song started as us trying to make a song like ‘Nightcall’, you know the one by Kavinsky,” Lorenz says, referring to the 2010 electro-house bop, which broke records for becoming the most Shazamed song after its use in the Olympics. “We just started playing and conjured up an image of a cartoon.” In their version, the pulsating bass and big snares stay – but it’s stamped with their trademark debased humor. “These references we make all end up quite far away from what they originally start as, and if you’re not trying to mask that you’re sort of copying them, we end up completely reinterpreting them you know?” Lorenz says.

These reinterpretations come in the form of flipping lyrics or added wordplay, injecting contemporary malaise into their often older reference points. To their critics, this scattershot approach makes them seem like irony-pilled cynics, refusing to settle on and explore truly sincere emotions. But in their defence, Sorry comes across instead as ethnographers of the modern day, reflecting the recent inclination of flicking through content new and old.

The unease of jumping around is a theme they are better equipped than some to explore. They don’t claim to be preeminent academics, as shown by the often coincidental process of choosing cultural touchstones to reference on this project, but their ability to deftly traverse genre and theme only reflects how much of modern society hides behind such disguises. In her own words: “That’s why we called it COSPLAY – it was just an excuse for us to try so many different genres.”

If there’s any running theme throughout, it’s how they play around with ideas wearing other ideas’ hats. “I think once we started doing it more, we saw it as something that could tie it together and also something quite funny,” Lorenz explains, “and also when you reference something that [well] known, with its own history, it adds an extra texture into your songwriting. There’s things you don’t have to say because the reference does it for you.”

The songwriting duo of Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen also trawled through old SoundCloud tracks of theirs, pulling samples and references from their own personal songbook. “It definitely makes it feel a little patchwork-y to us,” she says. “It also taught us a lot about trusting ourselves in knowing when something is ready to release, when we’re reaching back into old things we’ve recorded, because your ears can play tricks on you sometimes.”

This reaching back to retrieve sonic doppelgangers lets the band add an extra layer of meta subtext; in a way, they are cosplaying as their older selves. “The hook [for ‘JIVE’], I uploaded to Soundcloud almost six years ago,” Lorenz says, “and I thought at the time I wanted to do something cool with this, but the other elements just weren’t there yet.” In this way, picking into the past has also helped them grow and move forwards, incorporating their newer sensibilities with their musical origins.

If COSPLAY is the group’s excuse to play around with different genres, Lorenz and O’Bryen’s brand of off-kilter, witty lyrics is still plastered across the album. Even with a splattered range of disparate references, as well as this album being less “wordy” according to Lorenz, the two continue to bounce back and forth between sincerity and irony, as well as continuing to develop the comfortable chemistry between them.

“I think the energy that we have when we’re together is so up and down, that it naturally leads to moments of each,” she says. “I’m quite aware when I’m leaning a bit cheekier, but we’re also good at editing each other, almost like we’re kind of thinking of the same thing.” It’s an impressive feat for the songwriting duo, managing to maintain their wit and lack of self-seriousness across such a diverse spectrum of topics and concepts, but as Lorenz admits, it’s their lack of emotive intention that leads to the opposite. “Irony can be emotive in many ways, and songs need to be balanced,” she says, “Irony can be annoying, but I also just don’t like when things are too earnest.”

It’s expected, then, that the group’s music videos are just as strange, though also reflective of their desire to always be having some fun. “Jetplane”’s video has dancers donning paper masks, with highly choreographed movements over a minimalist set, while the video for “Echoes” features twins painted gold, serenading and arguing through a French monastery. “Music videos are just the most fun, aren’t they,” Lorenz says, “but they’re also just another way to express the emotions on the song.”

She is effusive as we trade personal favourites – “Pink had some pretty funny ones, and ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ is one I like” – and it’s clear that Sorry’s music videos are rarely an afterthought. “Sometimes when I watch music videos they feel so disconnected from the music,” she says, “and with some videos I watch now, I can’t imagine enjoying seeing them on TMF, like I used to love watching.” Sorry’s videos only further prove their ability to tap into the current generation’s propensity to swallow creative non-homogeneity, and perhaps even their overwhelming taste for it.

I leave my conversation with Lorenz just as mystified about the group’s process as when I began. She’s held the cards very close to her chest throughout. Despite that, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Sorry’s latest project doesn't compromise on any of the principles and values they’ve held up before. They continue to be singular in their collage of modern influences, their way of filtering genuine emotion through irony, and their love of being cheeky. In Lorenz’s words, she continues trying to write a chorus that ‘bangs’, but stick on Sorry’s new album, and you’ll find one after another.