Track of the Week: Sorry’s act of defiance on ‘Billy Elliot’ / ‘Alone in Cologne’
It can be hard for artists to keep in touch with their roots. If Sorry are anything to go by, they are making a renewed attempt to find that.
The band’s double-sided set of new releases in the form of singles ‘Billy Elliot’ and ‘Alone in Cologne’, following their November album Cosplay, presents the essence of the chalk and cheese of the Sorry diaspora. It’s more than clear by now that this is an outfit who resist any form of defined genre, but through the vehicle of these two tracks, this intentional act of defiance has never been more pertinent.
We begin with ‘Billy Elliot’ – and no, the song is not made up of forced Geordie accents and ballet numbers, probably much to everybody’s relief. Instead, what can be found in its place is a powerful and disarmingly mournful reflection on the loss of youth and the shift in identity that this stirs up when you return to the places that supposedly once shaped you.
With lyrical nods to both The Carpenters and ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ by The Verve, the song certainly covers a lot of sonic ground. Coupled with this is Sorry’s own foray into psychedelic, synth-driven, melodic pop – and although stereotypically this evokes a feeling of the mood being on the up, the band masterfully utilise this as a tool to break down expectations, leaving a deeply contemplative gift in its place.
To this end, the change leading into the second track, ‘Alone in Cologne’, might fool you into thinking that this is a release in which Sorry can be found exploring the deepest depths of their inner feelings. ‘Billy Elliot’ definitely strikes because it presents that notion without ever slapping the listener across the face with it.
Yet when the play button is actually pressed on ‘Alone in Cologne’, something quite unexpectedly different appears from the fray. There are immediately notes of funk, rap, perhaps even a little rap and techno – fitting, given this is a song set in the heart of a German city. This smorgasbord of sound may seem odd to some, but the reality combines to create the heart of Sorry’s manifesto.
The track’s more than subtle hint of belligerence is actually quite charming when allowing all these elements to merge into one wall of sound. Those booming intonations give the song an edge that it would probably be lost without: there’s suddenly a grittiness and ode to grunge that cuts sharp through the noise.
To some, these two new singles are going to be like Marmite, not least in the juxtaposition between the tracks themselves. But do Sorry seem to care? No, they’re just going to keep marching to the beat of that raucous drum.
Fighting against the shackles of genre is always difficult to justify when you eventually just start recycling the same sonics over and over again. Maybe Sorry have actually come up with the ultimate solution: to simply make every track as distinct as the last, and that way they can’t go wrong. That rebellious spirit has never once failed them before.
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