Sophie May – ‘Stars and Teeth’ album review: A solid gold debut from a singular rising songwriter
In 2022, Sophie May scratched through the doors of the music industry with something sharp. Her debut single, ‘I’m With The Band’, was visceral and stays that way years on, and now, as she releases her debut album with a career and a reputation built on that unique boldness in tow, it comes as no surprise that Stars and Teeth has a bite to it.
The Skinny: Saying something like ‘I love you’ is all fine and good; it’s beautiful, and it’s timeless, but obviously, it’s been done before. The magic in May’s work is that she seems to understand the nuance in a point like that. She gets that the big, grand statements hold power, but she also gets that there are new angles to be found.
For example, on the opening track of her debut, she says ‘I love you’ by listing things like “the fibres of your hair”, “the blood inside your veins, the skull that holds your brains, the teeth that fill your smile”, all with a kind of hand reached out that says “gimme”. Leading to that classic, grand chorus of “you’re mine”, May’s take has humour to it, a fun gruesomeness as she takes the cliché of love and imagines it literally, begging to hold the gory little bits of a lover just as much as their hand.
See what she did there? It’s a love song, but it’s her kind of love song.
Stars and Teeth is a masterpiece of that, of May’s ability to be wholly herself and broadly appeal. Each song seems to take on two levels. On ‘Touch Me’, heartbreak is matched with a kind of nymphomania, singing of a breakup through the frantic desire to touch one last time. ‘If These Walls Could Talk, They’d Cry’ pushes that feeling into inanimate objects as May imagines the heartache her bedroom must feel too. ‘Dog Body’ is the most outright example, though, as a rageful song about periods and women’s ongoing battle with hormones and lack of medical research on our bodies sees the singer transforming into a dog, reminiscent of Rachel Yoder’s post-partum body horror, Nightbitch.
But throughout, there are still classic moments, influenced by May’s deep love for the titans like Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney or classic 1960s writers, like Phil Spector, which seeps in through her choruses as each and every song has that central hook that sticks in the mind. But it also exists in the variety of the instrumentals, as on one album, May is a doo-wopping girl group on ‘My Kind of Freak’, a crooner on ‘Another Song for the End of the World’, or something altogether softer on the lo-fi ‘Animal’.
If a debut album is intended to show the full spectrum of someone’s potential, May passes with full marks and flying colours. Not only does the record seem to tie together everything that has come before in her solo career, from the specificity of her images influenced by her work on her OCD, to her gorgeous vocal range, it also is undeniably improved by her work writing for others, like her regular collaborations with Matt Maltese or her recent Rosalía hit, as the building of that résumé runs in correlation to the scaling up of her work in both sound and confidence in her vision and voice.
Standout Track: ‘My Kind of Freak’
The Verdict: If you’re looking for exciting new talent that seems certain to lock in as a new great, look no further than Sophie May. Swiftly establishing herself as one of the new generation’s finest and most interesting songwriters, Stars and Teeth is a solid gold view of her ability to tie together unique storytelling and universal sentiment with a singular and glorious ribbon of heart and humour.
Release Date: March 25th, 2026 | Producer: Josh Scarbrow | Label: Psychic
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