SOFY: Another Day In Paradise 
Out Now
A nearly unbelievable list of achievements already ticked off, including Radio One onside with the demo of her first single, SOFY releases a short but sharp snapshot of Gen Z life before embarking on a UK tour. MK Bennett notes her meteoric rise.
The immediate recent history of the mixtape was less an artistic directive and more a marketing tool as a shortcut to buying integrity, record companies with more than enough money to print and make, using the tools of the poor to bypass criticism. In the beginning though, from the late 70s onwards, many hip-hop artists who later became megastars started out selling their cassette tapes literally from the back of their cars after a gig, back when tapes were a cheap alternative to vinyl and large scale production of them could be done on a relative budget. Once your studio costs are recouped, all profit goes straight to the artist. No middleman, no industry. Hyped only on stage and in print, if you were worth it, the slow burn was on your side.
Evolution requires history to make it make sense, and while the industry still sees profit as the bottom line, the artist will try to evolve the process. Hence, we have this “conceptual mixtape”, a long-form and cohesive story, with the narrative fullness as a reward. The constant and accelerated media culture that requires bytes as soundbites and cannon fodder for the greater good of the clickbait mafia means the continued surgery to minimize it and cut it down to acceptable chunks of listenability. Ignoring this standard short-term consumption model won’t stop the platforms it lands on from dissecting it regardless, but that is simple technocracy and as sure as the ink on your money.
Encouraging your audience to sit and listen can be a double-edged sword for some, but SOFY has the substance to support her expectation of attention, along with the ideal aesthetic to present it: muted pastels, plastic bags and a lack of capitalisation.
Starting with sticky, a sort of potted history of the last two decades of pop, this would be the natural single if they were going that way: a big mid-nineties groove, part Dubstar, part early Garbage, with that much-missed Funky Drummer beat, light on its feet, with a great keyboard hook and a melody that twists unexpectedly, a chorus that isn’t a chorus and a singalong coda, it is an upbeat delight that will be hard to beat and may well light up your radio come Springtime. Hush! Slinks like Lily Allen at a costume party, psychogeographic London pop via the Good Mixer in Camden, presuming it’s still there, with drums that sound like they are trying to wake you up in the morning and a chord progression in role reversal.
Togethertogether ups the ante, the volume and the beats per minute, and the music reflecting the narrated relationship as the full-blooded modern pop blooms into an assured and confident life. A dancefloor killer and heartbeat raiser, it has that forever unknowable ingredient that makes it a cut above, an everyday ease that relaxes and enthrals and excites the nerve endings and synapses equally. Mine, meanwhile, has another off-kilter melody that jumps and skitters across the beat like fried skin, a little pensive now, as if the air temperature dropped suddenly.
The brilliantly titled desktop wanders between pure pop and shoegaze/dream pop before settling on the jangly guitars and big choruses that Chris Martin has forgotten how to write, while pirates starts almost like a rustic charm, a countryside cottage turned carnage as the guitars titrate upwards in a reverie of Pixies and Throwing Muses style abrasive indie excellence. The giant designs-interlude is a crossroads in the relationship, the story and the mixtape, a short but compelling piece of acoustic diversion akin to Kim Deal’s solo material, a hesitant and nervous thing that should and could have been three times longer but is maybe more striking because of its brevity.
…front seat honey is a return to the album’s core pop sound, up to date production meets a joyous consensus of perfect vocals and rolling back the years indie guitar while the words tell a story familiar to anyone who has lived it and lived through it because whatever alphabetical prefix your generation has been given, some things never change. The finality of floating forever comes too soon; a mix of Blueboy and Kate Nash meets a famous German beat, and it is done, fading out on a harmonised chorus of unknown feelings.
As Dooley Wilson once succinctly noted, it is still the same old story, this fight for love and glory, from Sinatra to SZA via Peggy Lee’s monumental Is That All There Is?, opinion remains divided. Sofy uses the long-form concept as a framework to work off tales of stolen moments together, unsure of your status, the warp speed of our accelerated lives, leaving little time for love or lust. Still, that last fading sound as she sings, “ Maybe we could kinda stick together, share my sweater, float like this forever..” can make you believe that there may be hope yet.
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Sofy’s Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | TikTok
All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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- Source: NEWHD MEDIA
