Sofie Royer – before/after
Today, Sofie Royer announces her new album before/after, out 4 September on Stones Throw.
On her fourth record, the Austrian-Iranian pop artist and producer wonders if conflicts between past and future aren’t really just battles with our own selves. “The older you get, the more cognizant you become of certain patterns in your behavior,” she says. “So you ask, what will it take for me to stop repeating the same things over and over again? But then you find yourself behaving the same way.”
Sofie’s new track “Sesquicentennial” was written “just at the cusp of something, where you’re not able to define what that something is yet,” she says. “The idea for the song came to me in the Texas heat after a SXSW show when I read the word on the back of a bumper sticker. It means every one hundred and fifty years; which I remember my sunstroked self finding both silly and thrilling, and made me think about all that’s cyclical in our own lifetimes; what we’re fated to repeat.”
The music video for “Sesquicentennial” was shot informally by Sofie on her trip to China earlier this year. The video walks the line between paying homage to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and showing vignettes of her life.
A conservatory-trained violinist from Vienna, Sofie wound up in California aged 19, where she DJed, built Boiler Room in LA and worked at Stones Throw. Over the past six years, Sofie has developed her songcraft with three acclaimed albums. Now, she’s a pop artist who flavours her lyrics with references to Fassbinder, David Lynch and Falco, and has worked with serious pop producers for her new album – Matt Cohn (SZA, Charli XCX), Jorgen Odegard (Sabrina Carpenter, BLACKPINK), and Eli Hirsch (Suki Waterhouse).
As her songwriting and production have grown more complex and polished, Sofie’s lyrics weaving self-excavation with cultural commentary have become sharper. On before/after, the main target of her satire and critique is herself. But though Sofie might be her own worst enemy, she’s also the first person to laugh at herself: before/after’s cover depicts Sofie’s face crushed beneath a boot; the back of the jacket reveals she’s the one holding the boot. As she puts it, “Really, in the state of before/after, it’s always you vs you.”
1 Aug – Bruck a.d Leitha, AT – Paradies Garten Festival
28 Aug – Spiez, CH – Seaside Festival
12 Sept- Vienna, AT – Porgy & Bess
17 Sept – London, UK – Rough Trade In-Store (Solo)
19 Oct – Lyon, France – Le Sucre
20 Oct – Zürich, CH – Bogen F
21 Oct – Munich, DE – Import Export
22 Oct- Tirol, AT – Stromboli
27 Oct – Berlin, DE – Mikropol
28 Oct – Hamburg, DE – Betty
8 Dec – Paris, FR – Gaîté Lyrique
11 Dec – Metz, FR – La Bam
12 Dec – Amiens, FR – La Lune Des Pirates
#sofieroyer