At first glance, Sofia and the Antoinettes sounds like a band built for dramatic entrances and even more dramatic exits. In reality, it's one person, just with a rotating cast of selves. Which, as concepts go, is far more interesting.
At 23, Sofia has already created a world that's both cinematic and confessional, rich with references and emotionally precise, her writing drawing as much from old Hollywood as it does from modern auteurs, with nods to figures like Elizabeth Taylor and Bette Davis sitting comfortably alongside the influence of Sofia Coppola and David Lynch. After introducing that voice with her debut EP' WOMEN WHO LOVE TOO MUCH', she's continued to build a following drawn in by her lyricism and magnetic live presence, recently stepping onto bigger stages supporting Lola Young and proving the intensity of her recordings translates just as sharply in person. That world has extended beyond the music, too, with a residency at Bar Doña that saw her embody shifting archetypes - Women Who Cry Too Much, Women Who Smoke Too Much, Women Who Think Too Much - each performance another version of the same artist.
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Unlock with Dork+Now, she's entering a new chapter with 'Leaving The House Is A Performance', a title that neatly sums up both the record and the project as a whole. Because Sofia and the Antoinettes isn't quite what it seems. "Sofia and the Antoinettes isn't actually a band in the traditional sense, the Antoinettes being the versions of myself I get to know as I change, a way to explain I don't think of myself as one thing."
A fluid identity runs through everything, right down to the name itself, which she found "Wherever names come from! I went there once and got given this one, and so I kept it."
Before any of this reached an audience, there was a long period of writing in private - hundreds of songs that never saw a release. She recalls the familiar loop of trying to explain it: "I guess I spent a long time sitting on so much music and writing 100s of songs that never got recorded, and then people would say 'What do you do?' and I'd say 'Well, I'm a musician' and they would say 'Well where can I listen to your music?' and I got very tired of saying 'Nowhere'."
Putting out 'Buried (in this Room)' marked a shift, even if the intention behind it was pretty specific. "There was only really one person whom I wanted to hear it. Isn't everything really only made with one person in mind?"
Progress since then hasn't followed a neat trajectory. As for whether she can feel the momentum, it "Depends on the day you ask me, really, though I know I am extremely fortunate, and LUCKY to have the team around me that I do."
