The Darkest Skies Are The Brightest (studio album) by Anneke Van Giersbergen

From Mercury 03/22/2021 18:44

(This is just an exuberant, unapologetically romantic and hopeful album full of melodies and loving lyrics that will make you swoon and will possibly reacquaint you with that younger, more loving and more optimistic person that you have always been but have tried to forget. All over the top crap aside, this is just a gorgeous singer/songwriter album.)

This is a folk rock singer/songwriter album with some moments that draw from world music and chamber pop. The arrangements are unabashedly gorgeous. The thing that makes me love this album is that everything, from the earnest and pure song lyrics, the passionate and lovely vocals, the over-the-top romanticism of the strings, the choruses that make you feel young again and burst out to sing along, and the whole flow of the album, is so completely unapologetically un-cynical and earnest and hopeful. This is an album for the first day of spring. This album has the power (i think) to pull even even a stoic, somewhat cynical 31 year old out of his doldrums and reaffirm his deeply felt hope and love and romanticism.

The songs aren't all winners, most but not all. For me the first 3 songs are pitch-perfect, but track 4 "I Saw A car" loses me a little. As does track 8 "Lo and Behold". And...okay, that is it, all the others I adore in this 11 track gem. But even those songs aren't terrible, and I love that she goes full-force into them, doesn't pull any punches even in those tracks I wasn't vibing with quite as much.

Really, this album just completely blew me away. Sometimes you don't realize, or at least for me I don't realize, how cynical even singer/songwriters are on their albums and how much they perhaps pull back a little on the arrangements and the words and performances to avoid coming off as too earnest and corny. I forget how prevalent this is until I hear an album as joyous and unself-conscious as this one is. Its a breathe of fresh air. The fact that Anneke van Giersbergen is also an excellent vocalist and songwriter makes it all the more amazing.