“Artifice” by Sohn, Thursday, December 8, 2022

 

Christopher Michael Taylor, better known as Sohn, is an English singer, songwriter, and producer. The London-born musician moved to Vienna in 2007, signed to the British record label, 4AD, and released his debut record Tremors in 2014. The Guardian gave the record a mixed review, criticizing the singer's flare for the dramatic on certain songs, particularly on the track "Paralysed," but praising Sohn's musicality.

SOMEBODY BETTER LET ME KNOW MY NAME. The minimal sounds of Sohn's Tremors can start to usher in winter. The first single "Artifice" is the most exciting the album gets, and thus stands out on the album. Sohn has released three LPs, including this year's Trust, but his listenership is only at about 460,000 a month on Spotify. Before releasing Tremors, Sohn remixed Lana Del Rey's "Ride," and he has produced remix tracks for The Weeknd and Honne. The vocals on Tremors are vaguely reminiscent of early Fleet Foxes but I thought of this record when I first heard Carly Rae Jepsen's "Julien." The title of today's song refers to a trick or cunning, strategic behavior. In the lyrics, though, the speaker seems self-defeated--an external force needs to tell the speaker his name because he's "not at the wheel." Strategy is the opposite of playing the victim, but someone may use artifice to victimize another. It's a dichotomy that kind of sums up this year perfectly--trying to get ahead but succumbing to depression and toxic negativity from others. 

IS IT OVER?  In 2019, I celebrated the end of the year, maybe a little too much. There were certainly dark times that year, but despite those dark times, I felt accomplished--I stuck to a plan of learning Korean, my boyfriend got into medical school, and I achieved my gym goals. It seemed like I was on a path to something better. I haven't had a good year since then. There have been worse years than 2022; 2016 and 2020 are two of the worst and last year would probably go down as the third worst. The problem with this year was that the highlights were far between and the low points were more annoying than anything a highlight could reprieve. A lot of that has to do with a toxic coworker who tries his best to indoctrinate negativity to whoever listens to him. It's hard to be optimistic when listening to negativity for eight hours of your day. And that makes the bad news seem worse--The Itaewon crush, friends going through hard times, jobs lost, deaths, health scares. There have been good moments this year, but I feel like I'm not at the wheel, and I don't like that. Something has to change in 2023.  

Read the lyrics on Genius.