Album Review: "A Matter Of Time" - Laufey
- Breanna Macomber
- Sep 4
- 7 min read
Photo Credit: MELODIC Magazine
After having a breakthrough year last year, Laufey is back with a stronger, creative, adoring, romantic and heart-breaking album called A Matter Of Time. This album show the absolute brilliance of Laufey's mind and heart. This album is different than most in the way that Laufey ties an entire story together in small pieces in each song leaving audiences with a beautiful, gentle fairytale album that they'll love.
TRACKLIST
Clockwork
Lover Girl
Snow White
Castle in Hollywood
Carousel
Silver Lining
Too Little, Too Late
Cuckoo Ballet - Interlude
Forget-Me-Not
Tough Luck
A Cautionary Tale
Mr. Eclectic
Clean Air
Sabotage
Clockwork
The album begins with "Clockwork" - a song that really brings us back to the roots and uniqueness of Laufey's sound. The musicality of this song introduces us back to how Laufey brought jazz back into the music industry with ease. It's incredibly smooth and gentle which compliments her voice while the lyrics are very personal. The idea behind this song is almost a tell on how she's grown up. Her last album felt very hopeless romantic-like while this song introduces us to how it feels like she's got crushes down to a T. One of my favorite lines from this album is "And nothing brings e fear like meeting with my destiny."
Lover Girl
"Lover Girl" brings a whole new genre to the conversation switching from jazz to classic bossa nova. This song speaks volumes to Laufey's take on love and how, like me, we tend to do a lot of work in our minds when it comes to having a crush. I love the way she becomes infatuated with this person but somehow makes it so lovingly and like a fairytale. One thing that I really love too is how self-aware she is about what she's thinking about. In the bridge of the song she even mentions, "God, I'm hallucinating" which makes it incredibly relatable as we all get to that point.
Snow White
By far, this is one of the saddest songs that I've ever heard in my life. I don't know if it was the fact that I was driving across the country by myself after working so much and taking a much needed vacation, but this song brought me to tears. There's so much I want to say about this song but I'll try to sum it up. The vulnerability from this song comes from Laufey's insecurities of not feeling pretty, body image issues that not only she deals with but women as a whole. The worse thing about this song is the accuracy of it all. It feels that people who look a certain way get opportunities that other people might not get. The thing I love the most about this song is the corrolation of this song's title and the lyrics. One of the main things we know about Snow White is the mirror that tells the villain lies. Laufey connects the dots with this with a line, "But mirrors tell lies to me, my mind just plays along." This song is, dare I say, a perfect song. So beautifully gentle while also absolutely real and hard.
Castle In Hollywood
This song marks a different type of love - a best friend and the heartbreak that comes along when that break up occurs. The lyrics take us down a road of a ton of history that Laufey had with this friend. She talks about "the end of girlhood," "dating the boy that they dreamed of," and being tied to this person with a string really marking important moments that friends have with each other. The bridge gives us a little more insight as to what happened that brought this friendship to an end. All in all, a sad story that unfortunately is too real for a lot of people.
Carousel
Laufey has managed to find a way to make a song feel so whimsical, light and dainty. The piano in this song sound exactly like a carousel or circus music. This is another song where Laufey has been able to take a point of view and really double down. For example, the very first line of this song is, "my life is a circus." Laufey uses a carousel as an example of that never-ending feeling of things sort of spiraling. She points out that she's hoping someone will come along to bring her down and make it all stop going in circles all while throwing in callbacks to the circus idea.
Silver Lining
This song is able to flex Laufey's ability to switch to a swooney, lounge-singer style with an orchestra that compliments her voice so well, it'll make anyone a fan right away. The lyrics are so smart in this song. It's the perfect song for when our main characters are finally falling in love with each other in a rom-com. The point of this song is how some people you can favor so much that it doesn't matter how bad the situation is, as long as she's with this other person, she'll be fine and have a great time.
A Little, Too Late
In the song "A Little, Too Late," Laufey delivers another heartbreaking love song which is what really captured audiences with her last album about how willingly she was being vulnerable. Following the themes of the album of fairytale-esque stories and lyrics, this song feels a bit like the villain. The song is driven by an orchestra behind Laufey, which builds up and down helping making things more dramatized with each word Laufey sings. To me, this feels like the most like the artist versus any other song on the album.
Cuckoo Ballet - Interlude
This isn't something you see all the time, especially in our day and age with albums coming out usually with a certain agenda - write a ton of singles versus one cohesive story. Laufey ties in her love for classical music by giving us a dainty, fun song. No lyrics, just what sounds like a small band that is giving the singer a chance to flex on, again, as many ways to tie in a fairytale theme.
Forget-Me-Not
This song is just outright beautiful to listen to. This song shows off the singers icelandic roots as she intertwines the language with English throughout the song all while touching on the subject of her leaving home to pursue music. Laufey writes about her homeland and her journey all while pleading in the song to ensure that her home doesn't forget about her. The thing that I love so dearly about this song is how it's written like she's talking about a person, personifying Iceland and her childhood.
Tough Luck
Laufey is known for long, drawn out, classical music but every now and then we get a sliver of Laufey doing something out of her typical wheelhouse. Tough Luck feels like it's that. The beginning of the song feels the same starting out as any other song but then Laufey incroporates an acoustic guitar as well as some drums, all accompanying the orchestra. The lyrics are also just so amazing. Finally, Laufey being able to get revenge for all the heartbreak that she's been experiencing throughout her other songs. The bridge is one of the greatest points of this song where things really hit a high.
A Cautionary Tale
This song feels like what a lot of young adults really need to hear when trying to break into adulthood as well as experiencing deep heartbreak. Laufey goes through what it's like to come to terms with how giving too much of yourself in a relationship but also while having some sort of understanding of your partner also not being their all. The bridge in this song is her explaining who this person actually was but not in a mean way at all. It's actually in a very understanding way that she finally comes to terms with the trauma that this other person was facing that she was not going to be able to change.
Mr. Eclectic
Another bossa nova song but with lyrics that are incredible. Laufey brings up a subject that I don't think its talked about enough in music. She brings up how some people can come across very "high-brow" because they want to seem intelligent but in reality they just sound a bit cheap. It seems like Laufey had a bit of fun with this one. I know I had fun listening to it.
Clean Air
Finally a breakthrough for Laufey in terms of being able to move on. This song is so upbeat and bright which is extremely different from the entire album. Her vocals are something to note on this one too. Between the harmonizing and Laufey being able to have a little more freedom since this song take a folk appraoch. This feels like the song we've been wanting to hear from the singer of how she's finally on the up and up. This song touches on subjects of getting through a depressive phase and finally coming out of it being able to take a deep breath of fresh, clean air.
Sabotage
The last song on the album is Sabotage and boy, does it end the album with a bang. Laufey brings up the phrase, "A matter of time," which allows this song to really tie in the entire album with the title. The lyrics are so smart, touching on how sabotage which flips everything on it's head from before. It seems that the whole album, Laufey is spending it trying to be the bigger person but this song is just her letting it all go. She's ready for her own revenge. The music in this song is also so different from the rest of the song. What starts out nice and light quickly matches the energy of the lyrics and becomes so big and angry. All of this builds up to a point at the end where it sounds like the song cuts off short - just to send us right back to the top of the album to go through it all again.
Album Summary
It's very rare that I can sit and listen to an album from beginning to end and not just like almost every song but connect and love every single song. This album is one of the best ones that I've ever listened to between lyrics that make love seem so light and gentle to big and vicious. Laufey, yet again, has shocked me of what is capable of an artist and has somehow given us new outlooks on the idea of a love song.
Written By Breanna M.
*copyright not intended. Fair use act, section 107.
