Mysterious cyber-pop producer SOPHIE is readying a compilation of old and new material called PRODUCT, and it's being promoted with another one of its four new tracks. (Single "MSMSMSM" was made available a few weeks ago.) There's a peculiar balance between sweetness and menace struck on "Just Like We Never Said Goodbye," and it never reaches the kind of ecstatic peak you'd expect from a song about a joyous reunion. Instead, its dark, looming synths will leave you a little queasy, a feeling SOPHIE's never had a problem evoking.
Some of the songs collected on PRODUCT are more than two years old at this point, and in hindsight they look rather predictive. An entire cottage industry of glossy, off-kilter future-pop emerged in their wake thanks to the efforts of the elusive PC Music collective, and only the best tracks out of that group can stand alongside songs like "Bipp" and "Lemonade." SOPHIE's work ended up on Madonna albums and in McDonald's commercials, appropriate homes for an artist obsessed with hyper-commercialism and achieving a blinding sheen. That obsession's reflected in PRODUCT, too: when it was made available for pre-order in September, it could be purchased as a jacket, pair of shoes, and sunglasses before selling out. (It's still available as a "silicon product," one you can surely put to all kinds of imaginative use.)
PRODUCT will be made available in all of its various forms on November 27th.