Well, this was a hard one to review - not that it was difficult to like, but not an easy record to understand or come to a coherent opinion on, it was definitely on the weirder side. Next up... whoo boy, busy week. Jay Rock, Brett Eldredge, Metric, and (of course) Lana Del Rey. Strap in, folks, it's going to get messy!
So I occasionally get requests to review albums, but I also occasionally get bands or new acts that will outright send over their new records for me to cover. And for the most part, I try to get a chance to listen through all of it, but between my existing backlog and all the preparation I do for listening to more established artists, I just run out of time to cover everything, even if I like what I see. Plus, considering I do a lot of lyrical analysis, it can be a little infuriating when there's no lyric sheet or additional details provided beyond just the songs, especially if the mixing is poor and the lyrics are unclear. So when I got the email about Elvya, I wasn't initially planning to do much until I caught some choice details. Full name Elvya Dulcimer, her music was reportedly more in the vein of Celtic folk that was on the cinematic side with this being her debut... with narration from Arjen Lucassen, the mastermind behind Ayreon. And if I know anything about Arjen, even though he didn't produce this and I didn't precisely love The Gentle Storm that he did with Anneke Van Giersbergen earlier this year, he's got an eye for quality. On top of that, former Within Temptation and current Kingfisher Sky member Ivar De Graaf was handling guitars and drums, so I have every reason to believe this could be something special. So I decided to check out her debut Untold Stories: how is it?
