By Berlinda Recacho
I was rewatching Hal Hartley's short film Theory of Achievement (1991) and at the moment a frustrated but passionate Bill Sage shouts "Meaning is differential!" I had an epiphany. Onscreen this declaration prompts his idealistic socialist girlfriend Elina Lowensohn to slap him and lock herself in the bathroom of their sublet apartment until he promises to quit his deadbeat job which pays the rent, but kills his soul. And that's what I suddenly understood: what we get out of anything -- whether we're acting in a movie or watching it, making music or listening to it -- depends on personal circumstances and relevant factors. I didn't fully realize that the Montreal-based duo Sorry Girls' lovely new album Bravo! is a song-cycle about recovering from a failed relationship until I had listened to it all the way through several times. Heather Foster Kirkpatrick's vocals are warm and inviting, painting the scenery with shades of Nicolette Larson, Maria McKee, even early Madonna. That her voice feels familiar is part of its disarming power. She could be your interior narrator, tracking through similar errant choices in your own life. Songs about heartbreak are a dime a dozen -- just scratch the surface and find all the misery you care to steep in. Fewer and farther between are the songs that ask you to dig deeper to uncover your source of strength. The latter are what Kirkpatrick and bandmate Dylan Konrad Obront present as confessional meditations about picking up the pieces and moving forward, set to a retro pop beat.
I gravitate toward clever lyrics, and I can be snobbish about repeated lines and onomatopoeia like "oohs" and "yeahs" and "aahs". But on Bravo!, what at first glance appears simple is made dimensional by Kirkpatrick's resonant voice, supported by Obront's clever production. Words are imbued with first-person, been-there weariness, but also resolve and tenacity through the arrangements of keyboard, drums, guitar, and even woodwind and brass. Harnessing the words, pulling them apart, stretching the syllables into sounds, repeating through echoes, breaking passages into unexpected verses, making the lyrics add to the rhythm. There is a lovely complexity that happens in the performance, holding back with restraint and then opening up strategically for the most impact.
Kirkpatrick sings about insecurity with the confidence of someone who knows from experience. She upends the trope of the coy female voice giving ironic advice, like leaving a lover in "The Exiles" with a sage parting line: "You know I can't be/a mother to you and the mother of me." Alluding to the Biblical story of Lot's wife, who cannot resist looking back on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and is turned into the eponymous "Pillar of Salt", Kirkpatrick resists wallowing in the rubble of the past: "I'm turning all my fear/All my damage and all my debt to dust/Never gonna look back again" while a saxophone solo bridges chorus and verse. "This heartache feeds the pain your demons need" she sings in "Other Side", amid disco string flourishes and cool keyboard sequences. In "Sorcery", the repeated phrase "it's a weird world" enters a house of funhouse mirrors, stretching and folding in on itself before Kirkpatrick admits, "I try to run from my feelings/but I'm tripping as I dance." "Prettier Things" is the key to the album, pitting edgy and confrontational verses against a haunting melody that leads to the sweet exhalation of the chorus:
"Leave what you need behind for/prettier things
All those days are gone/long gone, no
I can't justify just barely holding on
I'm so terrified but everyday I'm getting stronger"
Hal Hartley ends Theory of Achievement with the enlightened realization that "Love is a form of knowledge." Similarly, Bravo! -- as an album title -- is a literal response, applauding the end of one thing before the beginning of another. It is full of musical affirmations, reminding you that your painful choice now is ultimately the right one for the future. Its allure lies in the delivery, rich in late Seventies/early Eighties soft rock production values, like echoed call-and-response. Kirkpatrick comes to the realization in "Used to Be": "And it's just me in the ring/It's just me I'm fighting/When will I be forgiven?" Deceptively mellow at times but always heartfelt, these songs chronicle standing on your own, being for the benefit of yourself and no one else.
Bravo! by Sorry Girls is out now. Details below.
[Photo: Sorry Girls Bandcamp]