Photo Credit: Sara Amroussi-Gilissen
Willow Shields
Willow Shields

London’s least professional music photographer and journalist, can be found most evenings in your local small venue drinking vodka lemonades and being told secrets.

10 days ago, out of the haze of lockdown emerged Sorry’s new double-sided single. Cigarette Packet and Separate came out of nowhere and blew all Sorry fans’ socks off. The double single is a different side to the band, reminiscent of their older tunes and a bit rough around the edges, two utterly perfect songs. Asha Lorenz says “These songs came from ideas we worked on from home during last year. The sounds are quite metallic/silver/grey and the lyrical ideas are repetitive almost as if they are whispers/mantras/ worries that you’d say to yourself and keep to yourself.”

Cigarette Packet is an upbeat and harrowing track, one of those songs when you find yourself dancing to it, unable to resist bopping along to the cowbell. In a similar vein of Sorry’s repertoire, it’s about heartbreak but this time it’s different. It’s dramatic but in a way where it feels like it was all inevitable – Sorry shrug off the end of a love affair with open callousness, comparing it to a cigarette packet. It’s amazing and relatable in the best/ worst way. 

Then ‘Separate hits, and it’s slow and vicious like molasses. It’s Sorry proving how perfectly relatable they are, with lyrics like “Feel like I’m the salt and you’re the water spinnin’ ’round” and “I like to think that I’m walkin’ somewhere. Even when I walk in circles”. Sorry put what it’s like to exist into catchy songs and I think that’s magical. Put that together with metallic, offbeat instrumentals, Cigarette Packet’ / ‘Separate’ are two beautifully tragic songs and they mark a more than strong return for the band.

Watch / Listen to ‘Cigarette Packet‘:


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