Sophia
As We Make Our Way (The Live Recordings)

Dedicated with infinite esteem and affection to User De Marga,

companion in the obsessive passion for Sophìa and Robin Proper-Sheppard (and the trio that preceded it all)

Last year (2020), Sophia, with residency moved to Berlin and Play It Again Sam (PIAS) as the new recording home, gave birth to the new album "Holding On / Letting Go", and the changes are noticeable.

In a temporal flashback, the first criticism leveled at the Sophia collective (that of "Fixed Water" and "The Infinite Circle") was that of an excessive conformity of the material... yet that material wove works that, for emotional density and ability to insinuate into the folds of the soul, had the power of a punch in the stomach... or the sharpness of a blade in the heart. After the mini-live "De Natchen" broke the continuity with memorable pieces like "Ship in the Sand", "The Sea" and the fantastic cover of "Jealous Guy", all the subsequent production of Robin and the Sophia Collective shifted the focus to the opposite side, that of writing in a varied sense, and unfortunately, not always excellent: "People Are Like Season" encapsulates the exquisite "Another Trauma", "Swept Back", "I Left You", and "Oh My Love" (the new high-ranking course forgotten), but also ambivalent episodes like "Darkness (Another Shade in Your Black)", and especially "If Something is Gonna Come", all centered on a wavering variety that borders on fragmentation - nonetheless "Seasons" remains the best-selling album, indicating the audience is right, the reviewer somewhat less. What follows is perhaps the least successful album, "Technology Won't Save Us", (references from Calexico to Mogwai: indeed, a scope really too broad or more explicitly, an album that shatters), the elaborate (and only partially successful) attempt at repair "There Are No Goodbyes", and the beginning of a dwindling hope in the true ability to channel the nonetheless enormous talent of Robin Proper-Sheppard. If it hadn't been for the quality leap widely perceivable in the very recent return to the scene, the subsequent (and long-awaited after an infinite time) "As We Make Our Way (Unknown Harbours)" would have risked sealing the premature end of a beautiful story, imbued with melancholy, flowered with unforgettable and enveloping ballads in an infinite chiaroscuro. That Robin, Jeff Townsin, Will Foster, Adam Franklin plus the string quartet and various orchestral instruments and synths, were crossing the arch of a new inspirational phase is precisely witnessed by this triple live album: 3xLp, or 3xCD. The title is not very different from the last work, almost to reaffirm that this, and not "what the audience wants," is the new course of the band. To say that "The Live Recordings" is simply the second live album would complicate and falsify the analysis, due to the difference in formats and periods covered, and because it's not even the "real" second live album: even wanting to exclude "Music for Picnics", there's still the attached "The Valentine's Days" with guitar, voice, string quartet, and applause... recently reissued in 2xLp red. In any case, in XL Repubblica of 2017 Tobia d'Onofrio summarizes Robin's past and present as follows: "Many may have found solace for their broken hearts with the haunting songs of Sophia (...). Few, however, will know the previous group of the frontman from San Diego, The God Machine, a seminal cult band active from '91 to '95. This power trio, who came from California to the London squats, made their mark flaunting a majestic sound, often saturated with distortions and feedback, bringing together, in a unique style, metal and post-punk, noise, and slo-core, drawing Gothic cathedrals in psychedelic deserts, as if the Led Zeppelin were short-circuiting with the Bauhaus". So, literally a lifetime later, "As We Make Our Way (The Live Recordings)" returns, in Robin's most suitable form, the live one, a summary of Sophia's entire production. Slightly disappointing is the choice to reproduce live on the first CD in its entirety "As We Make Our Way", with songs in the same order: too perfectly adhering to the original, except for a stunning "Baby Hold On" in the positive, and an "It's Easy To Be Lonely" with Townsin's drumming (instead of Isolde Lasoen, and resulting impoverishment in power and rhythmic scan) in the negative: a "The Drifter" that never disappoints balances the fortunes. Sliding away on the player, the first - more recent - album, it is the second and third that provide reasons for great, sometimes tremendous emotions. The second record opens with a sequence of classics: "So Slow" (from which the conceptual storytelling of Sophia began to unfold), "If Only", "Oh My Love" (very pumped megawatts) and an almost intangible "There Are No Goodbyes". Moreover, the only song to represent the eponymous album. Side B is a masterpiece of power and density of guitar sound: "Desert Song N 2" slowly and indulgently opens with melancholic dances, to reach the usual instrumental explosion... follows a magma-like version of "Darkness" that for beauty and perfection makes the studio recording suddenly forgettable: there are no comparisons, here it seems like being in front of a transfigured version of the Nine Inch Nails. The echoes and crackles of "Darkness" have not yet died out when the superclassic "The River Song" starts, with the tail repeated endlessly and the exhausted guitar echo. After such a proof of intensity, one wonders what else disc no. 3 might hold: a mix of melancholy, introspection, a tendency to digression and finesse. From the powerful "Bad Man", to the dense and orchestrated "Last Night I Had A Dream", to the bittersweet "Razorblades", up to the piece conceptually chosen for closure, "Directionless". An exhausting performance, for length, yet one that can be listened to tirelessly, again and again...

So, let's no longer ask ourselves "what was the turning point from 1994 to 1996, from the last smile in a deadly place to the stagnant waters": we have Sophia, reality, the here and now. The rest doesn't matter.