It took Beach House two years, the 1975 four years, and Saint Etienne six years to get where SoSo fauX landed on their debut single. Call it beginner’s luck (while Nicolai Kjellberg spent several years with Philip Tillstrom in Hearts & Colors, it’s his first time experimenting with party-parrot “psychedelic pop”) or a “they walked, so SoSo fauX could run” dynamic, but SoSo fauX already seems to have everything figured out. Well, everything but love, that is.
With the percussive groove of “Erica America” and I Like It When You Sleep -era vocal pastiche, TWENTYFOURSEVEN blurs love in real time: the residual heat of bodies that feel present but are no longer there (“I used to be the one to hold you tight”), the insecurities that thread and unravel in someone’s waning presence (“Do you see me as a fuckboy?”), the disillusionment of growing out of love (“And if I turn the page now, is it time to act my age now?”). Otherwise stated: “blur” in terms that the Thicke-ian moral compass for consent and the exoticized and/or fetishized memory of Surfaces would not understand, and all the better for it. If SoSo fauX’s debut single isn’t riding the radio waves in your car, it’ll take you to the starry-eyed galaxy swirl of love by the end on a rocketship of shimmering wind chime-esque glissandos and twinkling synths. Landing time: TWENTYFOURSEVEN.