Happy fluffy wuffy day today. Cherry blossoms and cute things. So I guess I need a nice happy album to review to match the day. Soko, Stephanie Sokolinski, purveyor of cute punky pop, funny sweet lyrics, and the occasional sad sad song. She has a bit of a dance electronica fixation, more than a hint of tongue in cheek disco, and really should have been a CBGB’s darling in another time and place. In fact she reminds me quite a bit of Blondie, and more than a hint of the Ramones.
Soko was what was playing when I last got drunk, a few years back now, I got drunk drunk, not just a little tipsy. It was summer, I had had a very tough few months, and the people camping next to us were shouting various stereotypical countryisms and throwing their bean bags against the side of my camper while I was trying to sleep. I cracked and decided to show ’em just what partying was…and may have dispensed with the glass and drank an entire fifth of something strong. What did I choose to hit the Tim McGraw playing rabble with? Soko. Temporary Mood Swings to be exact, so I am told. My Nico impression is not quite as good as Soko’s, but I allegedly gave it my best shot. “I am an antisocial mess” might be my motto. I promised fluffy wuffy today…this is about as fluffy as I get, I’m afraid….I think the partying cowpokes were too…I out-drunk them, and they retired for the night while I kept on drinking. I never touched another drop. Not had a drink since. Sloppy drunk doesn’t suit me. I took me all day the next day just to sober up. I wasn’t hung over, I was drunk over. I am a nice drunk, hilarious apparently…but ….anyway…here’s Stephanie…
She doesn’t have a bad album, though I prefer the first two to her 2020 offering Feel Feelings, which is simultaneously more experimental, it sounds like a circus or a ketamine trip and also more polished. It just doesn’t have that punk edge which I enjoy, she cleaned it up a bit too much for me…but it is someone out there’s favorite Soko offering, I am sure of that. It isn’t bad, it just isn’t for me. The first two albums – I Thought I was an Alien, (2012), and the punkier “My Dreams Dictate My Reality”, are perfect summer listening. Soko’s track from the first album “People always look better in the sun” is both devastatingly honest and cute at the same time – a bit like the lovely Soko herself. She talks about wanting to kill her ex’s girlfriend, about her mother’s partner dying and how we should all love each other fully in the here and now, she talks about how loving an addict is a wicked trip – and embraces her straight edge punk persona fully. Soko is a dedicated straight edger. Now, I didn’t much like straight edge – all this beating up people who get high shit, got a bit tedious, they were violently anti drugs, and it was just a nasty scene. Soko is the new modern kind of straight edger. Not the 1980s New York kind that enforced their mantra “True Till Death” with violent consequences, more a ‘hey I don’t do drugs and don’t tolerate people who do them in my life” kinda gal, which is what the scene should have always been. Poor Marlon. He gets torn down and dragged through it, she loves him, he loves drugs. I kinda prefer Amy Winehouse’s “You love blow, I love puff” dismissal of her own relationship, but hey, Soko does Soko and she does it well, and with the sweetest accent you ever heard.
If you are in the mood for some electronically enhanced punk pop, Soko hits the spot. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who actually digs the critically acclaimed Feel Feelings, over the rougher and folk-punkier first two offerings. Here is my favorite song of hers…I’ll Kill Her..she comes on like a psycho Suzanne Vega, and it is adorable. I promised cute….fluffy….funny even….just not boring…