Dreamwalker

2019年にリリースされたデビューアルバム『DEBORAH』、そして2023年2ND『BRAVO!』でその実力を世界に知らしめたカナダ・モントリオールのドリームポップ・デュオ、SORRY GIRLS。FLEETWOOD MACの1979年作『TUSK』をはじめ1970年代のパワーバラードと1980年代のポップ・ミュージックが持つキッチュな魅力を反映させたと言う3RDアルバム『DREAMWALKER』をリリース!

圧倒的な清涼感と透明感を醸し出すバンド・サウンドとヴォーカリスト、HEATHER FOSTER KIRKPATRICKの柔らかな歌声、そしてどこか懐かしい感覚のメロディーが全てを浄化する"RICOCHET"からしてSORRY GIRLSの魅力が滲み出ています。MEN I TRUST、TOPS、YUMI ZOUMA好きド真ん中の素晴らしい仕上がり!

While their yearning blend of dramatic (“dreamatic”?) early-‘80s pop and power balladry has been remarkably consistent since they formed in 2016, Montreal’s Sorry Girls have continued to refine their production technique. Produced by the duo’s Dylan Konrad Obront, their third album, Dreamwalker, finds him and vocalist Heather Foster Kirkpatrick tweaking the sleek, longing arena pop of 2023’s Bravo! toward something a bit more celestial and pining. Specifically, they cited such melancholy influences as Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac and the Blue Nile for this go-around. The duo have toured with such stylistically adjacent Montreal acts as TOPS, Sean Nicholas Savage, and Majical Cloudz’s Devon Welsh while meticulously constructing perhaps the most refined sound on the scene. Dreamwalker enters Sorry Girls late-70s-/early-80s-derived universe with "Falling Down Stairs," a song whose period reverbed snare, lite-funk bass, and rich synth tones underscore lyrics that mix nightmares about falling with memories of relationships. This ethereal blend of fantasy and reality reappears on tracks like the echoing “Ricochet,” about how no one ever really leaves ("Who could believe in only face-to-face/When what could be real will never fade away?"), and "Music for Rats," which has Kirkpatrick abandoned by friends and dreaming of finding a home in "another life…another world." That song is one of the albums relatively sparer tracks, trading cloudy synths for reverb-heavy piano and Rhodes piano until the second half adds synthesized strings. The track list ends on a resigned piano ballad, "Great White," which watches lives and plans go in and out with the tide. Throughout Dreamwalker, Kirkpatrick never stops aching for something thats gone or out of reach, a mood that, like their past albums, is likely to haunt listeners more than any particular song. ~ Marcy Donelson