Amiria Grenell is undoubtedly one of the most renowned contemporary indie folk composers, not only on a New Zealand scale where she comes from, but on a global scale.
For those who know her discography, the brilliance of her most recent album “The Winter Light” is anything but a surprise; Quite the contrary, it is the re-confirmation of the quality that we have become accustomed to in her three beautiful previous albums: Kapowhai (2006), Three Feathers (2011) and Autumn (2015), which are revisited often with the same pleasure as the first listen.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that any of them, with their specific characteristics, has stood the test of time. All remain remarkably contemporary.
Due to the indisputable quality of her discography, expectations regarding her most recent album were particularly high because album after album Amiria Grenell was always setting the bar for quality higher, always further.
Perhaps that's why some may have asked what Amiria Grenell would be capable of doing after the superb Three Feathers, winner of the Tui for Best Folk Album of 2012. Would her next album be good enough to overcome the challenge posed by Three Feathers? Amiria Grenell responded to these doubts with her stupendous third album of originals, “Autumn”, which is as unavoidable and consistent as the one that preceded it.
With a deliciously enchanting voice, in the true sense of the term enchantment, Amiria Grenell has been able to efficiently adapt it to a variety of musical styles ranging from folk to reggae, from alt-country to blues, from jazz to acoustic pop.
Perhaps for this reason her voice often seems to lull us in the breath of the passing wind, in a sunset at the end of a summer afternoon, in the silence of the forest trails on a pleasant autumn day, it has been agreed to brilliantly with a whole range of instruments present in the musical arrangement of her songs.
As for her most recent album The Winter Light, it is necessary to say that for us it will be one of the albums of the year, such is the beauty that accompanies it from the first to the last track.
The Winter Light follows what is an indelible mark always present in all of Amira Grenell's albums: they are existential albums that define, each of them, their own experiential circumstances that in turn are artistically translated in the way determined by their own creative time.
So it can eventually be said that The Winter Light is a kind of intense maturation of Kapowhai (just as Autumn matured a certain silence that was present in Three Feathers) in the way it deals with the same concerns, the same themes, the same search for inner peace, an emotional calm or a definitive love that for some reason has lost its way from us, the same desire for balance with nature and the human community; all this with the added advantage of a more serene look at what the lived experience has allowed to consolidate.
This serenity that vibrates like the song of cicadas on summer nights permeates the entire album in soft and delicate instrumental arrangements and with a whole suite of effective string details that stand out brilliantly throughout the album.
The Winter Light is another determined step in a solo recording journey spanning almost two decades, always done with great aesthetic coherence. The Winter Light seems to announce the end of a cycle and the beginning of another marked by the consecration of a warm and comfortable serenity that runs through it.
8.5/10