If you like music that keeps you on your toes, you’ve come to the right place. Baltimore-born and Germany-based singer Sophia Kennedy’s third album, Squeeze Me is here.
Recently featured on two tracks on DJ Koze’s album, Music Can Hear Us, Kennedy has been exposed to a different audience. For anyone new to her music, think Magdalena Bay, echoing the band’s special blend of indie-electronica, but with vocals that resemble the haunting quality of artists such as Mitski. In this album, she explores relationships, power dynamics and self-determination in just ten songs.
Kicking off the album is ‘Nose For A Mountain’, a slow but tense track where she seemingly ponders everyday life, and the knowledge that she will one day be alone. Listening to the track, you are constantly waiting for something big to happen, a climax or breakdown. The percussion instruments in this song give it an extra layer of suspense, with their reverberating sound. In the latter half, her vocals are heard echoing in the background, perhaps reflecting how if feels to live a solitary life.
‘Imaginary Friend’, which was the third single released for the album, immediately moves up in tempo and energy with a steady beat that keeps fingers tapping. It is certainly one of the strongest tracks on the album, grappling with the grief of someone who doesn’t exist, like the person you thought you knew changing beyond recognition. The static sound running throughout feels like remembering who they were but unable to reach that person.
Later in ‘Runner’, Kennedy imagines herself as a fly, climbing up walls and swimming in lemonade. While it may sound like an odd concept, Kennedy seems to be using the fly as a means to see what someone else’s life is like, ‘If I were a fly I’d crawl / Into your ear / Take a look around inside’. It explores the idea of sonder, the realisation that everyone, stranger or friend, has a life of their own.
The first single that was dropped for this record was ‘Rodeo’, a track where she asks the existential question, ‘Where are we heading to?’ For anyone who heard this single and went into the album expecting more of the same, may be disappointed. While the rest of the album has its own highs, this track is completely in its own lane. Where Kennedy has previously sat at a lower register, for this song her vocals become robotic, possibly a vocal effect placed in production. It is similar to the way Magdalena Bay present their vocals, a synthetic electronic sound, with this similarity going even further as Kennedy also uses repetitive lyrics like the band do in their hit song ‘Image’.
Stepping away from the synths and computerized sound, ‘Feed Me’ strips it back, featuring simplistic instrumentation at its beginning. It’s this track which seems to be the inspiration for the album’s title as Kennedy sings, ‘You squeeze everything out of me / Pop the air right out of my cheeks’. As she accuses someone of taking too much of her, and needing her more than she needs them, the song is accompanied by the sound of a piercing scream, representing the crushing feeling she has.
Cinematic is how the album has been classified. This is certainly evident in ‘Oakwood 21’ which starts with a patchwork of sounds that cannot be deciphered: the clink of metal, the ring of a glass, the eerie distortion of a vocal played backwards. All this creates suspense, before being cut short and replaced with a soft piano. Lyrically, it is minimalistic, which only adds to the atmosphere, not overwhelming the listener with too many elements.
‘Upstairs Cabaret’ comes in at track eight as the shortest on the album. It is also the only one to feature no lyrics, continuing the cinematic theme with a choir vocalising in a haunting way, like the soundtrack to a horror film. ‘Closing Time’ then follows on from this, a piano based track that feels like the final credits of a film. Why this song was not chosen as the final track, given its title and theme, is unclear. Instead, ‘Hot Match’, the second single, closes out the record with its catchy melody and indie-like drum beat. The revving of a motorbike or car can also be heard in the distance, adding an edge to the song and a sense that there is more to come.
Kennedy will play her second ever London show on 19th November at Shacklewell Arms, bringing her haunting and psychedelic sound to the big city.