If you sell your album in conjunction with a promotional dildo, then a cynic could say you might be compensating for something. That’s not to make a comment about anything phallic, rather the overwhelming sense that this is a record reliant far too heavily on a legacy of concept.

SOPHIE first dropped Bipp / Elle in 2013, and in the interim the world has gone through several cycles of interest and disinterest in the culture of concept heavy post-pop production. At this stage, to be completely honest, Product simply isn’t enough. Most of the notable tracks have been in circulation for long enough to sound tired, and anything new is cut from a tone now so burdened by commentary and analysis it’s effectively boring. One of the biggest challenges posed by the record is SOPHIE’s seeming indecisiveness as to whether the album is club music, or electronic experimentalism.

The former certainly provides more fruitful rewards. Cuts like Vyzee and Just Like We Never Said Goodbye make for melodic, futurist nostalgia (which as of now is a thing, alright?) channeling the saccharine instrumentation into genuine dance-floor giddiness or triumphant pop. Yet the latter, the more abrasive stretches of fizzing liquid and sticking latex, feel like an extensive think-piece that doesn’t really know how to make its concluding point.

Angus Harrison