Sorry have announced details of their second album, ‘Anywhere But Here’ – watch the video for new song ‘Let The Lights On’ and read our interview with vocalist Asha Lorenz below.
- READ MORE: Sorry – ‘925’ review: thwarted 20-somethings steal from boomer culture with glee on impeccable debut
The new album follows the band’s 2020 debut ‘925’, which NME awarded five-stars upon its release in 2020, and saw them work with producer Ali Chant and Portishead’s Adrian Utley in Bristol. Lorenz said enlisting Chant and Utley for the project was a choice made to add more of a “classic” feel to their genre-meshing sound.
“We were at Ali’s studio down in Bristol, and we asked to work with them to get a more classic sound,” she explained. “We got lots of advice for them on what amps and stuff to use, because me and Louis [O’Bryen, Sorry guitarist and co-songwriter] mostly just do it at home.”
The balance, Lorenz said, was to “keep the world of the songs together” and maintain their initial charm from the demos she penned with O’Bryen, while giving them some polish, provided by Chant and Utley.
To achieve this balance of traditional and innovative, the band used samples during the recording process and wedged them between two more routine recordings of the band playing. “We wanted it to incorporate samples and the things we like to make from the computer, but do it in a live way,” Lorenz said. “When we’d play the songs live after we’d done the sample stuff, it sounded bigger and heavier and so we wanted to do [the recording] backwards.
“We produced the song first, then we played the samples inside of the song, and then re-recorded it again,” she revealed. “It felt more together, and we did that for pretty much every song.”
After the release of the album’s first taster, ‘There’s So Many People That Want To Be Loved’ last month, which Sorry described as “a bit of a sad-funny love song”, the band returned earlier this week with the new single and video ‘Let The Lights On’.
Described by Lorenz as “a fun love song for the club,” ‘Let The Lights On’ is one of the most immediate, catchiest songs Sorry have written to date. However, it is still underpinned by the delicious darkness that she and O’Bryen conjure in every song they write.
“It shows a different side to the album, and people should be able to understand this one a bit more – it’s a bit more accessible,” Lorenz said of the new track.
Coming at the end of the writing process for ‘Anywhere But Here’, the vocalist said that ‘Let The Lights On’ adds some pop sheen and an upbeat melody to an album that’s darker and slower than their debut, reflecting on how much the world has changed in the two years since ‘925’ was released.
“It’s quite slow, the record, so we felt like the album wasn’t showing everything that we can do,” she said. “‘Let The Lights On’ and another one called ‘Key To The City’ were written at the end of the process and take things back a bit more to the last album in terms of their production.”
Watch Sorry’s video for ‘Let The Lights On’, directed by MILTON & FLASHA, below.
Sorry’s debut album was released on March 27, 2020, just four days after the nationwide lockdown started. Since then, a ‘Twixtustwain’ EP arrived in 2021, alongside the official digital release of their brace of 2017 mixtapes, ‘Home Demo/ns Vol I’. and ‘Home Demo/ns Vol. II’.
With ‘Anywhere But Here’ having been finished in the summer of 2021, the ever-restless Lorenz and O’Bryen have been writing again on new material and trying to continue their fascinating evolution, as the singer explained.
“We have some ideas about the future, and me and Louis have been recording lots of other shit, both together and separately,” she told NME.
“I think we’re going to put some more stuff out quite quickly, but we’re also looking to make some more stripped-back [music], going back to how we worked before, producing it ourselves and getting a great mixer in or something.”
‘Anywhere But Here’ is out on October 7 via Domino. See its artwork, full tracklist and the band’s new autumn UK headline tour dates below.
1. ‘Let The Lights On’
2. ‘Tell Me’
3. ‘Key To The City’
4. ‘Willow Tree’
5. ‘There’s So Many People That Want To Be Loved’
6. ‘I Miss The Fool’
7. ‘Step’
8. ‘Closer’
9. ‘Baltimore’
10. ‘Hem of the Fray’
11. ‘Quit While You’re Ahead’
12. ‘Screaming In The Rain’
13. ‘Again’
Sorry’s 2022 UK and Ireland tour dates:
OCTOBER 2022
25 – Chalk, Brighton
26 – Metronome, Nottingham
27 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
28 – Stereo, Glasgow
29 – Academy 2, Dublin
31 – Fleece, Bristol
NOVEMBER 2022
1 – White Hotel, Manchester
2 – Electric Brixton, London
The post Sorry share poppy new single ‘Let The Lights On’ and tell us about new album ‘Anywhere But Here’ appeared first on NME.
