Album: Sally Shapiro - Ready to Live a Lie

Ready to Live a Lie is so sonically vaporous it almost isn’t there. While the album’s 11 tracks draw from continental European musical archetypes – specifically Italian disco and Eurovision-styled balladry – there is little solidity which can be grasped. The wispy clouds in the album’s cover image are emblematic.

Taken individually, tracks can be lovely: slices of glacial electro-dance, of sighing balladry. There is pulsing album opener “The Other Days”; a glistening cover of Pet Shop Boys’ “Rent”; the languid, bossa nova-infused “He's Not You”; “Guarding Shell”, with its vague intimations of Imagination’s “Just an Illusion”; the crystalline ballad “Rain.” Lyrically, there is an easily missed bleakness. “Rain” is unambiguously about the desolation associated with rejection. Overall, the soufflé-light Ready to Live a Lie posits itself as an nth-degree distillation of the early Saint Etienne.

Sally Shapiro are a duo based in Lund, Sweden. They are Johan Agebjörn and a glass-voiced female singer named “Sally Shapiro”, whose real name is unknown. A debut album arrived in 2006. Three more followed, the last of which came out in 2013. All were accompanied by remix albums and singles. That seemed to be it. However, comeback set Sad Cities was released in 2022. Ready to Live a Lie is the phase two Sally Shapiro’s follow-up. Everything has pretty much cleaved to the styles showcased on the new album.

Ready to Live a Lie has taken a while to arrive. Album track “Purple Colored Sky” was issued as a single in December 2022. “Rent” first emerged as a September 2023 single. In addition to this lengthy incubation period, figures other than Agebjörn and Shapiro are involved. “Hard to Love” is written by Agebjörn and Elisabeth Morphew. They have also worked together when she has recorded under her Queen Of Hearts guise. Album closer “Rain" is credited to Agebjörn and Martin Gjerstad. The latter was integral to a 2013 Netherlands’ Eurovision entry. Before this, Charlotte Church and Sylvie Vartan were amongst those who have recorded his songs. Roger Gunnarsson, the co-writer of four songs and guest vocalist on one, has Sally Shapiro connections stretching back two decades. Co-producer Mikael Ögren made albums with Agebjörn in 2017 and 2021, and came on board with Sally Shapiro for Sad Cities. As well as the carefulness suggested by the lengthy lead-in up to the release of Ready to Live a Lie, there is clearly more to Sally Shapiro than Johan Agebjörn and the singer designated Sally Shapiro.

All of which makes it confounding that the Ready to Live a Lie is so indistinct. Less deliberation may have made for a more impactful album.

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