SOPHIE : SOPHIE

SOPHIE review

Not to replay the hits, but: every love song is a grief song in time. This, SOPHIE‘s long-planned second studio record, left incomplete at the time of her death but (should we believe it) well-sketched and premised, arrives to us not in that fashion, the second studio LP in a long career by an already-canonized producer, but instead as a final will and testament, a work along the lines of Kevin Gilbert’s The Shaming of the True or Made in Heaven by Queen, albums assembled after-the-fact as best as possible. We can’t presume that this is her second studio record, a mistake I see many critics already making. What her brother or others say doesn’t really matter here; while we should rejoice at getting to hear these works in any capacity, a last look at a beloved and much-missed artist and trans icon to boot, this is ultimately not wholly her vision.

This is not meant as a disqualifying statement, to be clear. Ultimately, what else could be done? Leaving this work of hers on a shelf to rot away, unheard save for a select few, out of some bizarre and necropolitical fixation on the obdurity of the will of the dead? Unlike Prince, I don’t believe in this model; I align far more with Neil Young’s take, who began the archival process deliberately while alive so as to set a standard for what that archival process might look like going forward, regardless if he passes before its completion (god forbid) or not.

Is this a way of saying that the self-titled record is a disappointment? In as few words as possible, yes. But it’s an understandable disappointment. Tracks here largely consist of a more gentle approach to the avant garde, often buoyed by verses from rappers and singers that are more often okay than revelatory. It is unsurprising who gives standout performances: Kim Petras collaborating with SOPHIE is written in stone to be a syncretic meeting of parallel minds, for instance. I don’t fault the performers here for not delivering work that feels on parallel with SOPHIE’s collaborations with Charli XCX, a notable absence here; SOPHIE was a producer, and part of a producer’s job is to push and massage and guide and provoke their collaborators to making the precise right performance. Other hands may be gifted, but by nature they don’t have the same final vision.

This outlines a general issue this record faces as well. When a musician-driven group or project sees its temporary halt due to the passing of key figures, you often at least have performances that they were comfortable with, the raw material in finished or demoed form that you can put the screws to with clever production and overdubs. This, for instance, is how the masterful finishing of the previously mentioned The Shaming of the True was accomplished, producing a record that is properly the progressive rock masterpiece of the deceased Sheryl Crow collaborator that it was destined to be. The loss of a producer before a project’s completion is a bit trickier. Not only was SOPHIE a musician herself (as all hip-hop and electronica-derived producers are), making beats and layering her own original music together, she was also precisely the person who in other cases would be doing the finishing of the work. A producer’s job is a complex one, especially in this day and age, acting as part sound and recording engineer shaping the soundfield and texture, part editor adding and subtracting key final brushstrokes, as well as an overall director of performances and takes. That which SOPHIE lacks is SOPHIE herself, that final bristling avant-garde soda fizz pop that made her work always as effervescent and ebullient as it was brainfeeding and cerebral.

SOPHIE stands at least better than Coda, the similarly developed project from Led Zeppelin following the passing of John Bonham. In both cases, they are the least-valuable of the esteemed artists’ careers; in this case, however, there is not a sense that it is glorified odds-and-sods pushed out for critics, collectors and obsessives (like, ahem, me) or studio execs looking to make a last quick buck off of a dead artist’s name. This was to be her next album. There is a great sense of melancholy at the thought of it never coming true, a second death nested within her bodily demise. And, despite being imperfect, a let-down, failed potential, it still sits comfortably as a good record. The lingering trauma of her early death hangs unfortunately like a cloud over this release, which we are blessed to have received. Oh, what could have been.


Label: Future Classic

Year: 2024


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