by: Alana Brown-Davis
Last week, Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey released her third album ‘A Matter of Time’ via Vingolf Recordings and AWAL. It is the follow up to 2023’s ‘Bewitched’. At the 66th Grammy Awards, ‘Bewitched’ earned Laufey her first Grammy for ‘Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album’.
‘A Matter of Time’ represented a detour, or rather a expansion in Laufey’s discography. Her initial projects ‘Everything I Know About Love’ and ‘Bewitched’ were influenced heavily by jazz standards courtesy of the Great American Songbook.
She has said of the album:
“Every new album for me is a blank book of stories to write. […] I’m constantly thinking about classical and jazz, how to properly preserve them and pay homage. For this album, I just wanted to let my heart wander. […]
People expect a pretty façade of girly clothes, fantastical stories, and romantic music. This time, I was interested in seeing how I could draw out the most flawed parts of myself and look at them directly in the mirror.”
On ‘A Matter of Time’, Laufey collaborated with Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner to help her pinpoint where she wanted the emotional wavelengths of the project to land. She described it in an interview with Elle as a concept album about a young woman unraveling. This is ostensible in songs like ‘Lover Girl’, a musing of a hopeless romantic infatuated with someone beyond measure.