Wind brisks the surface of a frozen lake.
To its north, you notice the seasonal home of a flooding waterfall. A flow that's paused in time allowing you to appreciate its rhythm. You take your first step out on the frozen glittery shell. The delicate grand piano of ‘The Bloodletter’ twinkles as the blade of your skate tastes the grooves of the ice. You follow these grooves, catching Navy Blue’s cadence as he unfurls into poetic currents.
“Every time I write it’s like a love letter, Thoughts start to flow, An erosion from where the flood measured”, he bleeds into the reflective and omnipotent ‘Orchards’. A track that feels like its elements are aching to be thawed out. Violins sounding as if they are blaring from an old radio meshed with sombre piano chords.
Navy Blue aka Sage Elsesser, shares with us his latest album The Sword & The Soaring. A soft, decorative piece of his world that is expressed through narrative, woven between grief, faith, growth and wonder. Where one line is orchestrated the other is in tow. ‘Guardadas’ explores these themes deeper, whilst storing pensive pirouettes in its harp chords that soften the ice below the surface, plucking strings that almost mimic the twangs and pings of melodic ice cracks.
‘My heartbeat’ recoils the glacial dormancy of the first third of the album. As cracks form under the slice of your skate, the tempo increases to an 8/8 drum pattern. Water under the lake picks up as fast as Navy Blue’s lyrics, prospering a delicate dance between you and the ice. ‘24 gospel’ melts and leaves lyrical imprints underfoot in wake for a thundering verse from Earl Sweatshirt.
By the time we reach the last third of the album the lake is completely thawed out. The waterfall pouring its heart out into the body as Navy Blue bares the sanctity of his mortality. The pianos on ‘Sharing Life’ spiral like streams of melted ice down the foliage into the lake. The sun drawn from its frosty cloth warming up for precious melodic rebirth ‘The Phoenix’.
Words by badbitchbenny