The humming and building of “Leikara Ljóð” goes into the hymnal, lullaby-like “Alyosha”, and she sounds completely different on the soulful “Fare Thee Well” - when it starts, it’s easy to mistake for an Aretha Franklin ballad. Sundfør’s penchant for melodies is still miraculous, and though they number less on this album, they’re still just as powerful. “Alyosha” is an ode to a previous lover (“All I want when you are gone / Is you back in my arms”), “Ashera’s Song” is largely instrumental, but makes use of lyricism when it’s there (“Flows through me / Electricity / Love and light to all beings”), and “Fare Thee Well” is a mental adjustment for someone’s absence in her life, perhaps Alyosha. It’s clear through this most recent evolution of Sundfør that she, too, has bloomed.Įven though Blómi is more relaxed, her subject matter is still emotional and heartfelt. “Leikara Ljóð” begins with birdsong and builds instrumentation mostly through handclaps and humming, and the album’s title means “to bloom” in Norse. It’s calmer and more emotionally stable than both previous records, more keen to evoke natural imagery and sounds. If Susanne Sundfør’s 2015 masterpiece Ten Love Songs was a harsh, often dangerous exploration at electropop so sharp it cut, and her follow-up Music For People In Trouble was a recalibration towards stripped-down folk, then 2023’s Blómi lies somewhere in between.
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