Gig Review: Sorry At Shacklewell Arms
Sorry's electrifying return: A night of honest, cheeky alt-rock gems at Shacklewell Arms.
On Friday 26th January, North London indie-rockers 'Sorry' presented a night of curated music for the 'Friend Crush' series in Dalston’s infamous pub-stroke-music-venue the Shacklewell Arms. The line-up consisted of HANK, Denh Izen and Black Woody, but when the latter pulled out at the last minute, there was a quiet rumbling in the air. Sure enough, a perplexing proliferation of fish emojis began popping up on paper print-outs plastered to the walls; a quick google search shows that before they were called ‘Sorry’, the band were called ‘Fish’. Things were looking good.
Though I missed HANK perform, I did catch Denh Izen, a mercurial grunge band that swirled fuzzy post-rock and ambient shoegaze together. The first half was littered with hiccups as they trudged through newer tracks, each member of the band wearing a different expression of discomfort. In safer waters the band thrived, like the ambient indie opening of ‘Goodbye’ and mellowed melancholy of ‘Innocuous’. Highlight of their set was certainly ‘Slips Away’, the hopeful lyrics poking through the dark Interpol-meets-Slowdive murk. Though I’m still more convinced by their recorded music, I wasn’t fully disheartened.
To incredulous whoops and yells, Sorry took to the stage for a 40-minute set, playing a punchy string of unreleased music with wry, cryptic smiles. Singer Asha Lorenz had a hood pulled up and a duster jacket closed tight around her, as if hiding humbly from the sparked interest in the room. As their 2022 album ‘Anywhere But Here’ deals with the dizzying magnitude and loneliness of London, so too these new songs explore the intricacies of forming and sustaining relationships in a metropolis. Asha and co-writer and guitarist Louis O’Bryen entangled their voices in a chirpier single near the end of the set to renounce a lifestyle of 'bohemian parties' and 'nights out in Soho'. Known for their live production, the band mixed snappy clips of pre-recorded vignettes between songs, highlighting their paradoxically digitised vulnerability. In a world of constant innovation and change (often for no good reason), this set was refreshingly and unmistakably their own creation, their own sound. The band weren’t letting themselves off the hook so easily, however: ‘these are all new songs,’ Asha laughed, ‘so they’re a little sloppy’.
Several songs in, Asha was joined on-stage by trad-folk musician Avice Caro in a sweeping floor-length dress, who joined the band in their invitation to the audience to ‘smack that ass’. Some real diamonds shone through the set; the lyrics on one track addressed an enigmatic ‘Mickey [...] you’re so fine, you make all my money’, a refrain so catchy that my friend and I shared a look of disbelief as the song danced and skipped. This is so fucking good, she mouthed at me, and I nodded back slowly, open-mouthed. A little angstier now, the band bit at a character who's ‘been sleeping upstairs’; this dejected tone continued as they admitted defeat, nostalgic for a time in which they ‘used to be a winner’. Post-pandemic reality hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows for the five-piece either, it seems. Join the club.
Sorry have been abnormally quiet for the last few months since globe-trotting at the tail end of 2023, followed by a one-off show in Hackney for Pitchfork, In a 2020 NME review, the band’s stage presence was called ‘mild’, alongside some scathing remarks that they were ‘snotty brats’ who ‘act like they’re too cool for the interviews they’ve agreed to’. Four years on, and rest assured – any of this lingering malaise has unravelled to paint honest, cheeky alt-rock gems sure to re-enter the industry with a bang later this year. They’re really, very good. Watch this space, folks.