Sofie Alise - Break from the Bends EP
- Samuel Stevens
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
On Break from the Bends, out November 14, 2025, via Hall of Fame Artists, Sofie Alise doesn’t just invite listeners into her world—she hands them the key to her dorm room, her diary, and the internal monologues she tries (and fails) to outrun. The Los Angeles–born, UC Berkeley–shaped singer-songwriter arrives with a debut EP that feels startlingly lived-in, gorgeously self-aware, and remarkably confident for an artist still balancing essays, social life, and the emotional hangover of first love.
Across seven tracks, Sofie filters heartbreak, obsession, and limerence through her smoky, conservatory-honed vocals and a blend of soul, jazz, and left-of-center pop. Rather than presenting heartbreak as clean or empowering, she leans into the mess—the relapses, the contradictions, the push-pull between independence and longing. It’s no wonder her early singles have built buzz online: these songs feel like late-night voice memos polished just enough to gleam, but never enough to obscure the bruise beneath.
The EP’s opener “talk sh!t”—and the song that launched the project—sets the tone with its blend of wit, ache, and emotional self-sabotage. Co-written and produced with Justin Gray (after Sofie interned for him, no less), the track captures the dizzying contradiction of wanting someone back while tearing them down in your head. It’s sharp, melodic, melodramatic, and painfully relatable—the kind of song that sounds like someone talking big with their friends before collapsing into a heap when they get home.
If Break from the Bends has a thesis, it’s on “we both know”: the quiet acknowledgment that two people are tangled in something they can’t name and can’t quit. Sofie sings with a mixture of resignation and yearning, her voice floating delicately over a warm-but-fragile arrangement. It’s the sound of two hearts circling the same truth from opposite sides of the room.
The standout of the release—and the boldest swing—“every time” proves Sofie Alise is far more than a diarist with a pretty voice. Crafted from a sushi-fueled demo made in a dorm room, the song blooms into a cinematic, Bond-esque noir-pop moment at the hands of Justin Gray. The ticking-clock motif, the sultry chords, and Sofie’s confessional lyricism (“my knees are black and blue, ’cause that’s just what I do, every time…”) turn the track into a gripping study in self-sabotage.
What could’ve been a raw sketch becomes something sweeping, stylish, and elegantly tortured—a perfect encapsulation of Sofie’s knack for pairing unfiltered honesty with moody, high-drama production.
Covering Fiona Apple is a risk; Sofie Alise pulls it off by refusing imitation. Her version of “criminal” leans into slinkier, jazzier territory, letting her smoky tone reshape the song’s famous bite into something more languid, bruised, and intimate. Rather than matching Apple’s ferocity, Sofie sinks into vulnerability—and it works beautifully.
Playful on the surface but emotionally spiralling underneath, “boy problems” channels the chaos of young adulthood: texting someone you shouldn’t, caring too much, and trying to convince your friends (and yourself) that you’re over it. It’s witty, melodic, and subtly devastating—proof that Sofie can thread emotional complexity through deceptively bright pop moments.
The EP's penultimate track, “who’s chasing who,” is a blurred-boundaries rocker through mixed signals and shifting power dynamics. Sofie navigates the quiet confusion of a relationship where neither person wants to admit they’re the one still reaching. Her vocal restraint is striking here—she lets the uncertainty hang, unresolved and haunting. Sofie's debut EP ends with the project's most introspective track titled “closure”. A blistering, open diary page turned into a song as a powerful piano-driven ballad. Sofie allows her voice to soar further than the rest of the songs, showcasing the song's true emotion without ease.
Break from the Bends is the type of debut that feels like a first chapter, not a finished statement. Sofie Alise doesn’t write about heartbreak from a distance; she writes from inside it, elbows-deep in the mess, trying to make sense of cycles she’s still stuck in. That immediacy is what makes the EP so compelling.
With Justin Gray’s polished yet emotionally grounded production and Chris Taylor’s mentorship, Sofie’s raw potential is matched by clarity of execution. What began as a thank-you project has grown into a cohesive, vulnerable, and strikingly ambitious introduction to an artist who is too soulful to be boxed into pop, too self-aware to be dismissed as confessional, and too honest to look away from.
Sofie Alise bends beautifully, breaks loudly, and turns it all into art. And if this EP is only the beginning, the next chapters promise to be even more thrilling, more cinematic, and even more heartbreakingly human.
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