Sorry at Gorilla
Johnny James, Managing EditorBook now
Sorry
Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.
Sorry return to Manchester in February, this time headlining Gorilla with a new album that captures the full strangeness and clarity of a band who’ve spent years ducking easy categorisation. COSPLAY, released late 2025, feels like the moment their shapeshifting stops being mischief and starts being purpose – all those masks, detours and half-jokes suddenly adding up to something sharp and affecting.
Across 925 and Anywhere But Here, the band built a reputation for scrambling elements of post punk, pop, and jazz into a winking, self-aware update on indie rock. COSPLAY keeps that instinct alive but refines it: the ideas collide, but the songwriting cuts deeper.
They recorded it across multiple studios with a revolving door of collaborators, the final product landing like a film stitched from borrowed scenes into a coherent whole. ‘Jetplane’ reimagines a Guided By Voices tune into a grubby little parable about fame. ‘Waxwing’ turns a cartoon icon into a shadowy lure. The springy indie rock of ‘Today Might Be The Hit’ nods to Ludwig Boltzmann’s ideas on entropy – a neat parallel for a record where genre boundaries dissolve.
‘Echoes’ is the COSPLAY‘s centre of gravity. Inspired by a poem about a boy shouting into a tunnel, it spirals into a song about losing yourself in someone else – where “echo” becomes a third presence in the relationship, blurring who’s speaking and who’s being spoken through. Asha Lorenz delivers the hook like a whispered commandment: half mantra, half warning. It’s some of the most direct, exposed writing the band have shown, without sacrificing their instinct for odd angles.
Already well road tested, including while supporting Fontaines D.C., the album will no doubt take centre stage at Gorilla, which is a tight enough room to catch the detail but big enough for the heavier moments to breathe.
