Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new SOPHIE album from SOPHIE.

Yes, here we have a new full-length album from game-changing producer, singer, and songwriter SOPHIE, a name that should need no introduction at this point, at least to the crowd of people who clicked on this review the fastest - eager fans who most likely already have a sense of SOPHIE's massive impact on a lot of the more creative and subversive sonic trends that have gained more and more ground in pop music in recent years. Not to mention the fact that she has worked with the likes of Rihanna as well as Madonna and Charlie XCX, who tributes SOPHIE on a key track from her new hit Brat record.

But for some, the question may still remain, how did SOPHIE's notoriety get to this point? Well, as a pioneering producer and DJ in the early and mid-2010s, SOPHIE had a huge hand in crafting some of the most forward-thinking and cutting-edge sounds in pop today. Go back and listen to a lot of her early singles that were eventually compiled into that Product project. Listen to some of the work that she did alongside a PC Music artists like A. G. Cook.

Listen to the production that she had on Charlie XCX's boundary-pushing Vroom Vroom EP. These works and more all culminate into what feels like the shape of pop to come, or at the very least, a snapshot of sounds and aesthetics that are more widely accepted and understood now.

Now, as SOPHIE began to make more of a name for herself as a producer, it became clear that her ideas and talents were too great for her to merely just continue playing a supportive role for other artists. As she started to broaden her sound and artistic image with killer and now classic art pop anthems, as well as crushing postmodern bangers such as "It's Okay to Cry", "Face Shopping", and "Ponyboy", which are just a few songs that would be included on her fantastic full-length studio debut, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, which for sure as an album is great on its own, but simultaneously, it was a record that I think still showed SOPHIE in a pretty early stage of her career and showcased endless potential.

However, a proper follow-up sophomore album never happened as we lost SOPHIE in a tragic fall just several years after the release of Every Pearl, which obviously was an immeasurable loss and left a lot of fans with a question of what if. A posthumous album seemed out of the question. If her fanbase has proven to be anything, it's discerning, and many of its members have voiced rightful skepticism of such a thing.

But a posthumous album now exists nonetheless, and it's been brought to fruition by her brother and sometimes sound engineer, Benny Long. But while he's had the most primary hand in completing record, he has been careful in public statements to make clear that whatever changes or mix alterations he had to make to these tracks, they were minimal, and that the album itself and the tracklist were nearly complete.

Which - I get why Benny would want to put that out there, because protective fans obviously want to hear something that is unaltered or reflective of SOPHIE's artistic vision. But you also have to wonder with the fashion in which this album is being released: Is the material on it even properly finished? Is this work SOPHIE would have released in its current state, and will it reflect positively on her legacy?

Sadly, there are more questions than answers, and for what it is, all we really have to work from is this album, which is a pretty massive statement of a project, mind you. Sixteen tracks packed with features over an hour of material. One side of me is excited to see this, but then another side of me is actually listening to the thing, and I can't be the only person who feels like the detail quality and writing on these tracks is just massively insufficient. Even if this record was not a posthumous album and it came out as it currently is presented, I think a lot of listeners could easily hear that the standards that were set by previous SOPHIE tracks and releases, like Every Pearl and like Product, are just not being met on this record.

There are just lots of moments that left me scratching my head, even with SOPHIE having reputation as a pretty experimental artist.

The first leg, I will say, is pretty rough, with the tone being set by a four-minute long intro that's mostly just a very murky, cinematic drone that doesn't develop all that much outside of taking on some sounds that might be distant dogs barking. It's creepy and evocative in pockets, but as an intro for anything else other than a horror movie soundtrack.

Following this, the track "Rawwwwww" is mostly what you would get if rather than doing a deconstructed club track, SOPHIE instead was doing a piece of deconstructed trap. There are some interesting coincidental creative parallels, too, as the track sounds like SZA's "Low" if you stripped everything out of the song that made it catchy and fun to listen to. I mean, the oddly detuned 808s throughout the track are certainly ear-grabbing and unique, but there's just not enough going on on this song to prevent the vibes from turning awkward. I mean, rapper Jozy on the track is certainly doing her best, but she does not have the lyrics or the presence to really fill the gaps around such bear production.

Following this, the track, "Plunging Asymptote", is another step in SOPHIE's excursions into breaking down club music, dance music into this very weird post-industrial soup. But maybe this instance of it is taking things a little bit too far, especially with the title being repeatedly buried into my mind like a meme. The whole track feels like I'm just staring at a deep fried screenshot of a Fruity Loops multi-track.

Then after this, "The Dome's Protection" offers very windy atmospheric synth swells over which we have these spoken word passages that feel like I'm sitting through some technocrat's new age wet dream. In my mind listening to this, I'm sitting through a dimly lit PowerPoint presentation that just has me looking for the nearest exit.

There are some other cuts deeper into the album that have a more conventional pop and dance appeal, like "Reason Why" featuring Kim Petras, as well as "Live In My Truth". But even these songs eventually hit a wall. As on the song, "Why Lies", the vocal contributions here, sound like a tone deaf Grimes who occasionally is doing like dolphin sounds, not to mention some of the lazy half baked rap bars like "Save that drama for your mama."

Excuse me?

I know SOPHIE's music did occasionally have a tendency to embrace absurdism, but this just feels cartoonish and deeply unserious, especially for a posthumous album that so many fans had such high hopes for.

There are some other tracks where SOPHIE's chops as an electronic music producer are more of the focus. But sadly, the best example of that comes in the form of "Berlin Nightmare", which is this jarring, grim, groovy combination of techno and house with some pretty relentless synth bass and some skittering snare breakdowns. The issue is this track was already released as a single, and it's just a classic case of a record's best moments being released as teasers before where the album is even out.

Because, yeah, digging further into the deep cuts, there's not really a whole lot here, especially when you consider how tracks like "Gallop" feel so short and unfinished compared to other tracks. It's like we're just padding the album out at this point with filler.

Sadly, the weak start to this record is matched with a pretty weak finish, too. We have "Exhilarate", which pretty much sounds like what you'd get if SOPHIE was going to write a totally soulless, vaguely inspirational pop anthem with stretched, farty bass passages. I mean, if this is genuinely what SOPHIE was going for, Bibi Bourelly is an apt feature. The vibes may be rancid, but at least they're consistent.

There's also "Always and Forever" featuring Hannah Diamond, which for sure is pretty while it's on. But this is one of several tracks on the record that while they may be palatable, even more palatable than some cuts in the tracklist, they just feel really conventional in comparison with numerous highlights from SOPHIE's back catalog up until this point. And after so much success being a musical maverick of sorts, I have a hard time believing that SOPHIE would have basically set up the next stage of her career to just, I don't know, play it safe.

That being said, I do think the song "My Forever" is one of the more decent cuts here, I suppose. That is if you're on the search for some spacey, futuristic version of a '90s Euro pop track with lots of synths and a chill tempo. I mean, the chorus doesn't contrast all that much instrumentally from the rest of the song, but the basic building blocks are there.

And while the closing track does provide a very haunting message to end things off with, structurally, whatever potential this song had is pretty much dashed after the very jarring beat switch in the first leg as the track devolves from there and skips into a bunch of random changes that don't really bring a strong sense of finality to the record.

But yeah, unfortunately, this LP was just a massive disappointment despite the very high hopes that I had for it, given some of the teasers, some of the singles, and the high amount of effort and care that I assumed would go into it, given the close connections that SOPHIE had to all those involved with the project. I mean, it still remains that a lot of the material on this doesn't really feel all that reflective of SOPHIE's best work. Some of it barely feels even finished.

Much of it feels like twittering and experimenting and shooting for something without quite hitting the target, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong three on this record.

Anthony Fantano. SOPHIE. Forever.