Eighties textures and solid basslines, images that go beyond a mere exercise in style: the Californian artist manages to persuade despite production that feels overly polished.
A boot stomps on Sofie Royer’s face. On the back cover, one discovers that it is the artist herself pressing the shoe to her cheek. The image sums up Before/After: pop that constantly toys with its own staging, between elegance and irony. Fourth album, and still an impression of a mental soundtrack: a record threaded with American visions – westerns, motels, nocturnal wanderings in Sofia Coppola’s vein, tension and mysteries inherited from David Lynch.
Musically, Sofie Royer continues to refine a highly crafted writing. The 80’s synths and the basslines of the singles Sesquicentennial and Keep On Keeping On establish a soft, almost nostalgic atmosphere. Elsewhere, Auto, Opium, and Cowboy Mouth operate like pocket-sized hits: short, built from a few elements but with a genuine melodic hold.
Meticulously crafted pop, built like a film
The reserve appears mainly in the production. Surrounded by collaborators used to today’s pop standards, Sofie Royer offers here a very clean and controlled sound. At times, this polish diminishes the album’s relief, whereas contemporary pop often gains strength from its rough edges and its accidents. A few tracks would thus have benefited from being less tightly framed.
Before/After nonetheless finds its balance on tracks that are more open where the choruses break out of their frame. It is there that the record becomes most convincing: in this pop built like a film, very written but capable of letting through images that go beyond the mere exercise of style, and in the quest for the perfect hook.
Before/After (Stones Throw/Modulor). Out September 4. In concert at the Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, on December 8.
