Old-school European glamour emanates from this excellent album by Austrian-Iranian pop singer Sofie Royer – the stuff of chilled rosé on an Antibes balcony or discos in the Rimini summertime, away from the crassness of influencers and classlessness of fame.
Royer, who sings in English, French and German as well as songwriting, producing and playing most of the instruments, released one of the gems of 2022 with her second album Harlequin, which mooched elegantly through yacht rock, new wave, and untrendy 70s chansons. After the fantastic Italo-disco single Mio, this follow-up increases the tempo to a brisk yet distracted power-walk. It’s a concept album of sorts inspired by the book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl by the French anarchist collective Tiqqun, about “consumer society’s total product and model citizen”, namely young women.
Royer gets swept up in existential reveries, whether about the role of the artist (Nichts Neues im Westen) or the power struggles of modern dating (Indoor Sport), dispensing droll pearls of wisdom: “Don’t mess with a girl that wears rabbit fur / I can guarantee that bitch has nothing left to lose” she sings on Young-Girl (Illusion). Ghosts frequently appear and Royer is often running from something – the overall feeling is of a woman restlessly having a stress dream on exceptionally fine bedding.
Musically, her core new wave sound hits harder than before and there’s a greater emphasis on disco and synth-pop, resulting in her most immediate and commercial songwriting yet. A product to readily consume, perhaps, but very high quality at that.
• Young-Girl Forever is released on 15 November
