SOPHIE had been producing the follow–up to her monumental first LP, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un–Insides, for almost four years before her passing in January 2021. Including the ones she’d chosen for its lineup, the PC Music veteran and hyperpop godmother left behind hundreds of tracks—some considered for a project dubbed “TRANS NATION”, some already unveiled between 2015 D.J. sets and quarantine–era HEAV3N streams, and all lying dormant to be overseen by her brother and long–time mixing engineer, Benny Long.
For three years, no more news emerged regarding the figure so loved for her raw, accepting, and incalculably influential approach to pop music. That is, until June 21, 2024, when a list of dates and times was released on all official channels for the premiere of SOPHIE’s first single since her passing.
Along with his sister Emily, Benny Long had been quietly completing the sophomore album SOPHIE was intent on releasing. As he reported, only finishing touches were made: The tracklist and song compositions had all been finalized prior to her passing.
At last, we have SOPHIE, clocking in at just over an hour and boasting sixteen tracks. Unlike most posthumous records, which newly curate an assemblage of leftovers and features, SOPHIE is as close to its namesake’s vision as possible: The only guest appearances had their vocals recorded prior to SOPHIE’s passing, and it retains a deliberate sequencing that quarters the record into sections reflecting different facets of her catalog.
But crucially, the album feels hollow. SOPHIE’s voice doesn’t appear once. Whereas her artistry is typically pristine and viscerally affecting, SOPHIE feels more safe and skeletal. At some points, it’s an unenjoyable jumble, but at others, it’s a deeply successful, deeply moving posthumous effort that evokes to its listeners a stunning, gaping absence.
This is clear with just the opener: “Intro (The Full Horror)” is a four–and–a–half minute slow burn awfully evocative of death. Its somber tones, dragged in horror and decked in distant screeches, call back to previous ambient ventures like the “Infatuation” reworks of Oil’s remix album but distinctly lack their dynamism. “RAWWWWWW” is more engaging but similarly cold, letting Jozzy’s raps pierce through its detuned, measured bass and clicking percussion. It’s a reminder of SOPHIE’s penchant for discordance, albeit an utterly barebones one.
“Plunging Asymptote” then pummels heavily behind Juliana Huxtable’s haunting vocal repetitions; its layered and precise vigor is as SOPHIE as it gets, but structurally it leads nowhere. Following this, “The Dome’s Protection” is an upsetting eight–minute detour, with Russian D.J. Nina Kravitz harping on human consciousness over an enduring wallpaper ambience. It’s no less a slog than a decade–old VR demo.
Conventional pop appeal isn’t new to SOPHIE, but whereas songs like “Immaterial” were drenched in poignancy and sonic exultation, the dance–pop offerings of SOPHIE’s “joy” section feel tragically uptight in comparison. In “Live In My Truth,” for example, LIZ repeats routine mantras about partying and self–acceptance, severely divorced from SOPHIE’s normally transcendental portraits of queer resilience. Likewise, “Reason Why” with Kim Petras appears far muddier here than in its punchier, more laser–focused 2018 live debut. “Why Lies” is the most promising inclusion, whose screechy synth repetitions bolster a tune designed to be weightless.
The following “techno” section, primarily arranged live, is a definite return to form, featuring multi–phased outings bubbling with energy. Thudding bass and distant machinery zip around BIG SISTER’s warbling erotic technobabble on “Do You Wanna Be Alive,” “Elegance” with Popstar exhilaratingly evolves pelting percussion into high–tempo hardstyle, and “Berlin Nightmare”’s subterranean bass thunders while dance artist Evita Manji interjects divinely: “Willkommen aus Deutschland, hönig” (“We come from Germany, honey”). But in a steep dropoff, the section concludes with the meandering, vaguely cinematic “One More Time”—another example of the album’s mere sketches of good sound design, falling just short of evoking actual gratification.
The final “celestial” goodbye arrives with “Exhilarate,” whose blown–out production and belted Bibi Bourelly vocals together come off as an exorbitantly autotuned Disney anthem. Fortunately, the following tracks fare better.
PC Music artist Hannah Diamond’s reliably ethereal vocals glimmer upon “Always and Forever”, and the wonderful Cecile Believe, who’s previously contributed to SOPHIE classics like “It’s Okay To Cry” and “Ponyboy,” then produces a heart–wrenching performance on “My Forever.” The lines “I want to go back to forever / You’ll always be my forever” echo over an enveloping midtempo backdrop, making for an undeniable tearjerker, one to gaze at the morning dawn to while walking home from the club. It’s safely the album’s apotheosis, written long before SOPHIE’s departure but still invoking it so crushingly.
Finally, we reach the finisher, with legendary house artist Doss. It’s another track written before SOPHIE’s passing, but with a strangely rousing title regardless: “Love Me Off Earth.” Are we to literally love SOPHIE as she exists now, somewhere in an unearthly plane? Or are we to love SOPHIE to such a degree that she departs from the earth, in doing so immortalizing her vision and releasing our grief? Over glossy, cosmic synthesizers, Doss poses a different question:
“What is it worth to love me on earth?”
In the song’s final moments, her voice fractures into a single request as it dances mechanically off into the stratosphere: “Love me off earth, love me off earth, love me off earth.”
With that, our question is answered.
I was 15 when Sophie Xeon first changed my life. 2018’s “Faceshopping” was a glimpse into the beautiful, challenging, contradiction–heavy universe she was part–way through constructing. Her sound, tucked into the deepest faults between humanity and materiality, was prophesied to be the future of music, and I watched as that prophecy came true: Her synths swallowed the industry, propelling waves of pop and electronic breakthroughs, some to comprise the backbone of my college experience.
I’m 21 now, and SOPHIE’s rich, upside–down waveforms still ripple in the lives of myself and a global community of others. SOPHIE celebrates this fact but is accidentally mournful of it as well. It’s a mixed bag that, while scoffing at nostalgia as boldly as its namesake did, recalls a still–lingering soul we continue to love dearly off earth.
