Soko
I Thought I Was An Alien

THE REVIEW

She is almost terrified of raising her voice and going beyond the acoustic guitar, the very young Stéphanie Sokolinski, a Polish artist who emigrated to France, who, after some time spent learning the ropes and a couple of EPs, has released “I Thought I Was An Alien”, an album that seems to be born from a dusty basement, from childhood memories and a lot of nostalgia.

It is an album that comes from the heart, from suffering and joy, from a hidden sensitivity that plays hide and seek with the talent and ability to compose small song sketches: fragile, almost improvised, very simple, yet able to go straight to the heart. What characterizes this girl, no longer a child of the darkest underground, given the predictable success she is having in France and England, is the natural inclination to engage with quirkiness in the complex emblem between naïve joy and suffering, between fun and pure emotion. Thus, behind the delightful title track, weird enough and romantic just enough to melt the heart, there is hidden a sepulchral chant titled “I've Been Alone Too Long”, an excellent authorial peak that plants its roots in dark, very dark blood, but not yet clotted.

“I Thought I Was An Alien” is a very simple album, but capable of leaving different and seminal sensations, of stunning you and then just making you smile, because it is music already heard millions of times, but rarely so passionate and melancholic, so shy and even dissonant, so full of thoughts, words, and wonders.

There is the heart-wrenching psychodrama of “We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow”, splendid, that strolls with the death of summer of a “People Look Better In The Sun”, there is the drumming sadness of “Why Don't You Eat Me? Now You Can” and there is an acoustic ballad that drags itself on almost jazzy suggestions (“Happy Hippie Birthday”).

Soko is not inventing anything and she knows it very well, she knows that hers is just pleasant music. Yet she manages to make you experience, psychologically and emotionally, intense sensations, hidden behind the wall of shyness of these songs that would be truly heartbreaking if they didn't blush so often.

But the beauty is precisely this.

Delightful.