(Stones Throw)
The Austrian-Iranian singer’s new wave style hits harder than ever on an excellent album inspired by a treatise from a French anarchist collective

Old-school European glamour emanates from this excellent album by Austrian-Iranian pop singer Sofie Royer – the stuff of chilled rosé on an Antibes balcony or discos in the Rimini summertime, away from the crassness of influencers and classlessness of fame.

Royer, who sings in English, French and German as well as songwriting, producing and playing most of the instruments, released one of the gems of 2022 with her second album Harlequin, which mooched elegantly through yacht rock, new wave, and untrendy 70s chansons. After the fantastic Italo-disco single Mio, this follow-up increases the tempo to a brisk yet distracted power-walk. It’s a concept album of sorts inspired by the book Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl by the French anarchist collective Tiqqun, about “consumer society’s total product and model citizen”, namely young women.