This coming Monday, June 30th, MilkBoy is hosting my most anticipated show of the summer. Vienna-based, multidisciplinary artist Sofie Royer will be headlining the barroom that I regularly refer to as “Center City’s last old school rock club.” Royer is touring behind LP #3, 2024’s Young-Girl Forever, a collection of ineffably danceable and ineffably good electro-pop tunes inspired by Preliminary Materials for the Theory of a Young-Girl by French anarchist group Tiqqun, a 1999 zine that “dissects the figure of the ‘Young-Girl’ – a symbol of consumerism under modernity” that she first encountered while touring with Lewis Ofman. I recently got a chance to chat with Sofie Royer from the road, following the first date of her USA summer tour at The Echo in LA. We chatted about her first five years as a singer/songwriter, her time working with and for Stones Throw, and even went off on a bit of a tangent about our mutual love of cinema (Her friend and collaborator studied under Michael Fucking Haneke!)
*Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Izzy Cihak: Your third LP, Young-Girl Forever, has been out for more than half a year now. Have you had any favorite reactions to the music?
Sofie Royer: In terms of audience reactions, it has been fun that people have reacted so positively to it in a live setting. That has been really fun to witness, especially because it really was made with that in mind, so that’s been really cool!
Izzy: I really dig the whole album, but I especially love “Keep Running (Sebastian in Dreams).” How did that particular track come about?
Sofie: Thank you! That was one of the first songs of the record that I had written. It was just like middle of the winter in New York, I potentially was trying to run away from the situation, so maybe some of that is in there, but it’s also a bit of a, “keep on keepin’ on” anthem.
Izzy: You’ve put out a handful of really cool music videos for album tracks, and I like that you are so mindful of all of these different aspects of what you do, so I’m curious what kinds of things most inspired the visual elements of your recent work. I especially love “I Forget (I’m So Young).”
Sofie: Thanks so much! I am fairly referential when it comes to music videos, and I think that they are fairly different. “I Forget” was the first one. I got permission to shoot at the Swarovski headquarters. The maze and the black lake and those mirrored domes are actually permanent installations by several different international artists that were asked to contribute to the headquarters. That geodesic mirrored dome was designed by Brian Eno. And then the maze and the gardens were designed by André Heller.
Initially, the plan was to shoot the whole music video there. I got permission to film there. The only stipulation was that we don’t shoot during opening hours, but it was a beautiful summer’s day, the people lingered, and by the time everyone else got out of there, it was like 8pm. And the staff and crew weren’t legally allowed to stay past 2am and we weren’t allowed to set up while anyone else was still in there [laughs]. So, by the time we started setting up, it was fairly late.
Another aspect was that all of the shit is mirrored. There’re fairly limited images of the Swarovski headquarters online; it’s in the Tyrolean Alps. So, you don’t really get an aspect of what’s mirrored and what isn’t, it just looks shiny [laughs]. So, by the time we set up and started filming, we were like, “Fuck! You can see the camera in so many goddamn takes! This is gonna be so difficult to navigate!” Plus, we were running really close on time, because we had to pack up and be out of there!
So, whatever, but we had like half of a music video [laughs]. And we were like, “How do we reconcile all of this?” The team was only available on the weekend, and all the camera equipment had only been given to us as a favor by my friend Jasmin Baumgartner, who directed the music video. All of the stuff was a free rental as part of the film academy; she studied under Michael Haneke and sometimes they still let her borrow equipment. We were really operating under a tight schedule, and we decided to – this is like Film Trick 101 – reconcile it by it being a dream sequence. So, we filmed the rest of it in my apartment. I eat a crystal, whatever [laughs]. You get the idea…
Izzy: That actually segues into my next question. I saw on Twitter that you “follow” Criterion Channel and Depressed Bergman (which I love) and Parker Posey Updates, and I’m a totally obnoxious cinephile nerd.
Sofie: Me too! Me too!
Izzy: I live in a studio apartment, but I have a literal Criterion closet in my kitchenette that’s filled with my Blu-rays and DVDs.
Sofie: Amazing!
Izzy: I’m curious to hear about some of your favorite cinema, whether it be stuff that you’re just super into or stuff that is inspiring.
Sofie: It was the thing that I was maybe debating going into, but then, for maybe financial reasons, I was like, “Maybe I shouldn’t go into film…” But I did it for my international baccalaureate, so I did do it, as well as cinematography, for like five years in high school. That’s really when my obsession started. In terms of things that have maybe been a canon for me, I would say Dušan Makavejev’s Sweet Movie.
Izzy: That’s definitely in my top 10 of all-time!
Sofie: Amazing! I feel like I say this title and people are like, “Oh, is it like Scary Movie?” and I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no!” Sweet Movie is maybe one of my top of all-time. And Juliet of the Spirits, which is Fellini’s first color movie. They dropped acid, and you see it, because every color makes sense! They really thought about everything! Great mise-en-scène!
In the music videos, I maybe reference movies that were important to me at one point in my life, but they’re not like my favorite. A lot of “Indoor Sport” has Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in it, which I loved as a teenager, but now I’m like, “Ugh [laughs].” I was 13 and I was like, “Wow! This is an amazing movie!” And then you watch it as an adult and you’re like, “Oh god, this shit is so corny!” But in a really good way, in a really sweet and wholesome way… Or maybe not wholesome. I mean, the movie’s really not wholesome at all… Ignore what I’m saying [laughs].
Izzy: It’s as wholesome as incest can be, I guess…
Sofie: Yeah, as wholesome as incest [laughs]. But I love Louis Garrel! This is also the peak of all of their careers. Like, Michael Pitt, great actor! Or Eva Green! She went on to do Bond! I think maybe Louis Garrel has had the most interesting, storied career since then, in my opinion.
Izzy: You’ve played a handful of shows since the album dropped, with a number of festivals, and just kicked off your American tour the other night. How have the shows gone so far?
Sofie: There’s only been the one so far and, before that, I had a week of festivals in Europe that were fun. The live show is nice. I think it’s sweet that a lot of people stick around for merch. It’s always very sweet to see that there’s a lot of people that end up staying and waiting, which isn’t the same if you’re playing a festival. I’m joined by Rebounder on this tour, who are opening for me and then also play my set. We have a single coming out called “Tennis Bracelet,” so it’s been really fun playing that live.
Izzy: What can be expected of the live show when you play MilkBoy, in terms of production and energy?
Sofie: In terms of production, it’s pretty bare bones. I’m gonna just keep it real. There’s no stage design, but the music is really good! And our opening act is excellent! It’ll definitely be a really fun show, and I urge everybody in Philly to come out if they read this interview!
Izzy: I know you’ve been with Stones Throw for basically your whole career, not only being signed to the label, but working for them. What’s it like working with all of those people and being part of that family?
Sofie: The label is great! When I joined – this is a long time ago – I was 19 and I started interning there. It was a really small company back then, I think we were seven people, and it just immediately felt very fun. Once I was doing my internship, I was like, “I really hope there’s a job that will arise out of this opportunity.” And I got very lucky, they were looking for a digital manager to replace the one that just left, so I started doing that. As my role progressed, I took on some more A&R duties, I brought a bunch of my old roommates to the label, like Mndsgn and Knxwledge. That’s just been fun to watch their career and their trajectory. I ended up releasing my first record there in 2020. So yeah, it’s nice to be on both sides, I guess [laughs].
Izzy: On that note, I did just realize that this month is the 5-year anniversary of your debut LP.
Sofie: Oh, it is?
Izzy: Yeah!
Sofie: I didn’t know that!
Izzy: So, how do you feel about your debut full-length half a decade on?
Sofie: I like it a lot. I recently joined Substack, because in order to fulfill all the criteria for an arts grant — which is currently funding the tour that I’m on — they were like, “You need to have a newsletter.” And I was like, “That can be arranged!” And on my last post I got a comment from somebody like, “You should go back to the sound that your first record was. I feel like you weren’t trying as hard. Maybe you can reconnect with that part of yourself.” It sat with me because that record was made out of a really dark, terrible time in my life. I thought my mother was dying, I was dealing with the fact that my partner also had cancer, just like my mother. It was just not a great time in my life, and I don’t think I was trying to make a record. I was just making these songs and when my old boss asked to hear them, I sent them to him, and that ended up becoming the record. I do think it’s fun to try and explore songwriting and pop composition, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get back to that first record. And I also don’t want to, quite frankly.
Izzy: On that note, and this is a huge question, but what have been some of the personal highlights of these first five years of your career as a singer/songwriter?
Sofie: I did have some really cool opening slots. I really loved being able to open up for LCD Soundsystem, opening up for Air, getting to work with Nicolas Godin on his solo record that’s not out yet, getting to open for Lana Del Rey, just being able to connect with people I really respect and enjoy musically, like the band that’s opening up for me now; we wrote a really cool song together that I’m really excited for. I just really like making music. I think I did enjoy the last record coming out a lot more, because I was able to give a bit more thought to how much press I would be doing, what I’d be able to talk about, and I didn’t really have that for the first two. I mean, I had press, but I felt like it was still a little difficult for me to talk about and contextualize music. I mean, it still is clearly, but it’s becoming more fun [laughs].
*Get your tickets here.
