Sóley - Endless Summer (2017)

Back with her third solo album.Written over the period of one year together with her long-time friend and collaborator Albert Finnbogason, the new full-length sees the acclaimed musician from Iceland explore the more optimistic, sun-drenched corners of her songwriting. Soley's latest offering is the warmth beneath the snow at the end of winter, the seeds waiting to grow as spring whispers to us. From the heavy organs, synths, and minor keys of her last album Ask The Deep, 'Endless Summer' emerges with a kind of hopeful sweetness, and feels even more vulnerable, as Soley climbs with us to incandescence. "The idea for the album came pretty randomly one night in beginning of January 2016 when I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote a note to myself: 'Write about hope and spring'," she says about the LP's general direction. "So I painted my studio in yellow and purple, bought a grand piano, sat down and started playing, singing and writing." And 'Endless Summer' delivers just that, opening with the song "Ua" (named after her young daughter) that washes over us like a hopeful dream. It's based on an adventurous acoustic arrangement reminiscent of Joanna Newsom or Agnes Obel, which sets the tone for what is to follow in its wake. Throughout the new album, Soley's arrangements for a small orchestra give 'Endless Summer' a colorful touch: Take, for example, the track "Never Cry Moon", in which the sound of clarinet, trombone and cello beautifully engulf Soley's repetitive piano playing. Comprised of eight songs, 'Endless Summer' is an album that's grounded in fertile wisdom. Not just an ethereal dream of love and light, but a subtle, accumulative wisdom, a conscious choice to cling to vitality. One might say that one of Soley's signatures is the childlike wonder in her lyrics, and 'Endless Summer' delivers the same wonder, but with a kind of reverence for it, for she's no longer a wanderer in a nightmare, but an enchanted lover of mystery. With the album's title track, "Endless Summer", Soley soothes the wandering mind in her lyricism, asking: "Did you see the stars?/Did you see the sun come up?/You can find me in the flowers/You can find yourself some peace." 'Endless Summer' is like the Icelandic summer, a liminal, endless turning, a shift of consciousness, an endless awakening of continual brightness not without the acknowledgement of winter; it is the eruption from which the rebirth of light emerges.