Sorry at YES

One of the most exciting bands to have broken out of the North London scene in recent years, Sorry are playing live in YES’ basement on 15 June.

Thrillingly experimental and drawing on a potpourri of influences – everything from trip-hop to post-punk to jazz – Sorry are an ambitious band, but cover their tracks well; their 2020 debut album was laced with all the irony and begrudging cool that the North London scene buzzes off these days. But that’s all smoke and mirrors; there’s some great songwriting on 925. Tunes like the below ‘Starstruck’ are inventive, chaotic dreamscapes in which idyllic and hellish scenes intermingle, musically and lyrically. But they also contain a generous helping of good old fashioned earworms, too, made ever more hooky by co-producer James Dring, who’s worked with everyone from Gorillaz to Beyonce.

Sorry’s follow-up EP Twixtustwain (2021) saw the band dig into a more electronic palate, while still serving up the same frenetic yet sensitive songwriting. “The sounds are quite metallic / silver / grey and the lyrical ideas are repetitive almost as if they are whispers / mantras / worries that you’d say to yourself and keep to yourself”, says singer Asha Lorenz. The stuttering ‘Cigarette Packet’ is an easy highlight – a cartoonish, plucky track that sounds like an overly intense nicotine rush. It’s part thrill and part terror at the realisation of what that thrill could eventually lead to.

The band have stripped things back for their latest 2022 single, ‘There’s So Many That Want To Be Loved’, an awks love song that leans vaguely in the direction of anti-folk heroes Moldy Peaches, only deconstructed and coated an internet-age sheen. It just shows what shapeshifters Sorry are, and that’s by no means a bad thing; it serves to keep us guessing what’s to come on album number two – which, we really hope, will drop later this year.

Until then, it’s Sorry’s live show at YES that we’ve got our eyes on.