Julia-Sophie is an Anglo-French artist who you may remember from being a member alongside Neil Greenaway of the garage rock band Little Fish, who released a single album, ‘Baffled and Beat’, in 2010 before breaking up in 2012. That album had some great collaborators, as it was produced by Linda Perry and released on a label linked to Universal Records.
Having long since separated from the world of multinationals, as Julia-Sophie admits that she was “not interested enough in being famous to put up with all the shit they threw at me”, the artist has been publishing her own music since 2020 and has just released her debut album, ‘Forgive Too Slow’.
In ‘Forgive Too Slow’ Julia-Sophie gives herself over to the magic of synthesizers, drawing on a variety of influences. Sometimes she comes up with synth-pop bangers like ‘numb’, other times she’s reminiscent of Björk’s ‘Post’, as in ‘comfort you’, and other times she embarks on techno journeys like in ‘better’. «New wave, confessional folk or avant-garde 80s pop» are also among Julia-Sophie’s influences.
‘Telephone’, the closing track on ‘Forgive Too Slow’, may be the most accessible track on the album, despite being a ballad. Maybe it’s because the rhythmic base is reminiscent of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’, because the chorus is round as the sun, or because the production makes it sound like a ballad imagined by Chromatics in another time. In any case, Julia-Sophie saves the best for last.
‘Telephone’ is the story of unrequited love. The sentiment is so classic that Julie-Sophie finds a way to slip the phrase “all dressed up and nowhere to go” into the lyrics. And if in the verses Julie-Sophie pities herself (“Was it unlikely that you liked me? Was I stupid to think so?”), in the chorus she outright wallows in sadness: “Call me, I want to cry on the phone.”
