Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Juni Habel’s sophomore album “Carvings” is a raw and reminiscent journey through grief in a decidedly folk exploration of ephemeral life in the permanence of nature. The album is also Habel’s tribute to her teenage sister, whom she recently lost in a car accident. Creating the album was a family effort, with her husband on guitar and brothers accompanying with glockenspiel. On the album cover, Habel’s grandmother looks down from the upper window in their shared home where the album was recorded, a refurbished schoolhouse in the hinterlands just outside Oslo, Norway. Habel embraces the charms of a threadbare home studio setup, giving her songs the timeless quality of Joni Mitchell and Vashti Bunyan.
The album opens with “Rhythm Of The Tides,” a poignant metaphor for her sister’s unexpected death. Habel sings of dark water enveloping her, a pitch-black omen that gives the track a sense of urgency. She continues to question the melancholy in her life through her lyrics and frantic backing music. The standard drum kit and hypnotic strumming are joined by unexpected reedy wind chimes that devolve into an abrupt choral harmony at the end of the track. The motif of nature in lyrics like “the red against the green/is a call from a blossom that wants to be seen” and “endless games of love and hatred/are the rhythms of the tides” set the theme of the album: a dark exploration of death kept afloat with sentimental and vivid musings through the lens of nature and kinship.
The tracks “I Went Out And Sought For Your Name,” “I Carry You, My Love,” and “Valiant” address Habel’s grief directly through imagined conversations with her sister. Eerie, melancholic humming and fragile fingerpicking complement soft Spanish guitar riffs and catchy string quartet hooks in the comprehensive backing tracks. These intricate backing tracks complement the profound lyrics. The lyrics in “I Went Out And Sought For Your Name” evoke the imagery of children’s fairy tales, poetically describing her sister’s passing away as a “journey, you pulled the anchor while we gazed up at the stars.” The double-backed vocals in “I Carry You, My Love” form a makeshift duet, possibly Habel and her late sister, singing, “When the heart longs to be together in the ground … when my words won’t find you, I will find you in my tears” over the sorrowful humming and violin.
The album is also dotted with nostalgic, frolicking tracks like “Little Twirl,” “Chicory,” and “Drifting Pounds on the Rain.” The spirited combination of strings, a confident drum beat, bagpipes, and Habel’s bright voice provide a brief respite from the other delicate, emotionally heavy tracks. Alone though, these lighthearted tracks can lack substance, as the lyrics are generic and overdone when taken outside of the context of the explorative album.
My favorite, “When We Awake,” is a crossroads between the lighthearted and wistful sides of the album. Opening with sad velvety strings, the track gives way to optimistic, clear guitar strumming and a flighty piano for a jazzy touch. The lyrics are confident and the strongest of Habel’s lullabies, she heartily sings that “when we awake, the music dies.” Ironically, Habel’s album comes alive in this track, finding a rewarding harmony within the mismatched samples.
While the album is in the style of tried-and-true, simple yet evocative folk, the effortless connection of the instrumentals to the emotionally laden lyrics makes the album a must-listen, but not always an easy one. The songs harp on the same story, using the same motifs of nature and death in lyrics and the instrumentals, making for a thorough and immersive experience, but also a bit repetitive. When Habel does try to introduce variety, switching abruptly from brooding to upbeat numbers throughout the album, she excels and is able to showcase her evocative voice to the fullest. I was left wanting more variety in the album, but Habel’s monotony is also a testament to her adherence to her album’s core themes. In the unrelenting darkness of grief, Habel bottles the tinges of warmth and yearning found in sorrow and creates something truly beautiful in her committed exploration of death.