Sorry's 'COSPLAY' arrives as a world of doubles and disguises, but it's the precision that keeps the mirrors from fogging. The album frames "overlapping worlds" as a working method rather than a tease: identities tilt, references surface and recede, and the songs hold their line while everything around them shifts.
'Waxwing' sets the tone for that sleight of hand. It folds a recognisable pop fragment into Sorry's own mood - an interpolation of the 'Hey Mickey' lyric refracted until it feels like a half-remembered transmission. It's a neat proof of concept: a borrowed wink made strange without losing its hook. 'Jetplane' pushes the unease forward. It's skittering and menacing, a track that keeps its footing by letting the rhythm twitch while the inky sense of humour that's trailed the band peeks through the cracks. Between them, you hear how 'COSPLAY' handles contrast: bright shapes pulled through dark water.
'Closer JIVE' is the record's unruliest lunge and one of its most controlled. From the first bar, it's erratic and enthralling, up close and intimate, as digital feedback and splintered guitars pin down a looping, sticky vocal, while the arrangement keeps snapping shut before anything can sprawl. It reads like release rather than mess - a song that breaks form without breaking focus. 'Today Might Be The Hit' does the opposite job with the same discipline, a quick two-minute jolt that carries unusually snappy energy for Sorry and still leaves a trace of their oddness at the edges. It's a smart dose of pace that keeps the album's pulse honest.
'Echoes' is the clearest statement of the record's theme. Built on the image of calling into a tunnel and hearing a third presence return the sound, it turns love and identity into architecture: a mantra-like hook, a close, slightly distorted vocal, guitar arpeggios, and warbling electronics riding a distinctly Sorry-hued groove. It's tender without letting go of the chill that runs through the band's best work.
'COSPLAY' treats role-play as structure, not costume. Hooks arrive, then shift; masks slip, then hold; references flash, then vanish. The common thread is control: even at its most unruly, the placement of parts feels deliberate. This is a chapter that uses disguise to show more, not less - a record where the mirror isn't the point, the reflection is.
