Am I a girl in a dog body? Or a dog in a girl body?” muses Sophie May on Dog Body, a track from her debut album Stars and Teeth. The song follows a Kafka-esque transformation which, “Originally was just about feeling uncomfortable in your skin. And being a woman you’re reminded every month how animal you are. I believe humans are like every other animal here, just with bigger egos.”
As the song shows, she is a British wit in the manner of Alex Turner, with a British folk sensitivity in the manner of Nick Drake, along with a surrealist weirdness in the manner of Flight of the Conchords. All are favourite touchstones for the star — yet hearing her instantly lovable songs is to view the world afresh through one of the most exciting new singer-songwriters around.
If you’re doing something every day for eight months, you get better, so much more quickly ... it lit a fire inside me
May, 26, was born in south London, where she was brought up by her Australian mother and half-Australian father — “I’ve grown up with homesick Australians talking about the ocean” — and while her mother is a writer, there were no musicians in the family. May began performing as a slam poet in her teenage years, before picking up a guitar at 19 to play “really, really, really bad songs”.
Things changed in lockdown when, bored at her parents’ house, she decided to write a song a day. “I guess if you’re doing something every day for eight months, you get better, so much more quickly… it lit a fire inside me.”
She began posting videos online, then went big on TikTok with a “30-second song about a businessman, inspired a bit by Ben Stiller’s character in Reality Bites and by Patrick Bateman”.
She quickly found management, followed by a period of writing, recording a few acclaimed EPs and becoming part of a “global folk scene, thanks to the Instagram” including Brits such as Matt Maltese, Katie Gregson-Macleod and Imogen and the Knife.
Stars and Teeth is a pleasing step forward, veering between intimate confessional songs like Animal, which she describes as “a very soft raw part of my soul”, and more widescreen moments such as You’re Mine, which has a pleasingly disturbing take on having a crush: “From your legs to your spine/You are mine, all mine.”
“I wanted that big 1960s wall of sound,” she says. “But the lyrics are a bit like, ‘I’m going to eat you.’ It’s quite teenage. But I love those classic songs where the world’s ending because you don’t love me.”
May is heading to the US for a series of shows as word-of-mouth hype builds. Her ambitions for the album are straightforward: “Hopefully it means something to people. People often associate music with a certain time or a person they dated. I love that. And I love that it can give you PTSD if you hear it playing in a shop. If it can be that for someone that would be great.”
Stars and Teeth is out now
