Swedish italo disco / synthpop duo Sally Shapiro announce their fifth studio album, Ready To Live A Lie. Taking inspiration from synthwave, italo disco, nudisco, indie pop and bossanova, the album becomes their second for Italians Do It Better—again mixed together with label founder Johnny Jewel (Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire).

The name “Sally Shapiro” has always referred to both the duo, as well as the enigmatic anonymous singer whose real name is something else. But “Sally” is also a third entity: the fictional character singing about her love stories. It’s now been 18 years since Sally Shapiro’s debut album Disco Romance, that took influences from italo disco and indie pop with a naive and youthful flavor, as if everything “Sally” did was to “walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs”, as she once put it.

Ready To Live A Lie may, however, be the duo’s darkest album yet. The lyrics have shifted from the euphoria of first love to exploring “Sally’s” struggles in long-term relationships—love triangles, boredom, resentment, and the lingering sense of loneliness.

Pressed on 180-gram colored vinyl.