Released: 27th March 2020
Rating: ★★★★★
It might feel like it has been a long time coming, but the long-awaited debut from London’s Sorry prove that it was well worth the wait. “I wanna get in your head, you just wanna get out of it” points out figurehead Asha at one point on the opening ‘Right Round The Clock’, and tbh both sentiments couldn’t feel truer. A woozy, twitchy treat from first note to last, this gripping listen is a record that repeatedly blurs the lines between dream and reality.
Restless from the off, there’s an air of everything being ever so slightly off-kilter that drifts across much of ‘925’. Haunting at times, shifting into downright filthy riffs at others (‘Starstruck’ is an absolute killer in particular), it makes for a distinctive sound that keeps all of the current crop of indie starlets at arms length. “I never thought about you in your underwear cos I never really cared about what was under there” admits Asha on ‘Snakes’, her vocals sullen and downplayed, perfectly capturing the boredom of modern life.
Experimental in its genre-shifting, ‘925’ is nothing but captivating. From the lo-fi ‘Heather’ to the glam rock stomp of ‘More’, each track ends up in a completely different postcode from where it begins. Saxophones squirl through the haze, what sounds like a distorted childrens’ choir drops in at one point, before jagged ice-cold electronic spears rip through ‘Ode To Boy’. But restless and experimental doesn’t mean disconnected, and the world that Sorry have created here is an addictive and satisfying one. No apologies, this is stunning stuff.
Jamie MacMillan
