Review Summary: Depression, keeping moving, and creating your own hope.
Swedish singer-songwriter Anna Leone’s debut album was born out of severe depression. Originally completed in September of 2019, the album’s release was delayed until this month due to her own struggles with mental health. Now that it is finally out, Anna says this of the record: “I still can’t listen to it all the way through without crying, which is painful but also a good thing…I think.” A quick glance at the record’s name,
I’ve Felt All These Things, quickly puts this into perspective: it’s intentionally titled to frame each song as an emotional snapshot from her journey. So when Anna revisits this album, she’s basically trekking through all of the moments that brought her to this point – and in releasing the album to the public, she’s inviting us into that world and bearing her soul for everyone to see. It’s this human aspect – and her ability to capture it through art – that gives her hope. The record itself may be a culmination of years of depression, but the sense of mobility that comes from chronicling these feelings and then being able to look in the rearview mirror and say “I made it” is what keeps her feeling like life isn’t standing still – and as long as that’s the case, there’s always hope for a brighter future. “The songs are about isolation but they’re also about healing”, she stated in a Twitter post about the album’s theme. “I can only hope that that’s what people recognize in them.”
The imagery splattered across
I’ve Felt All These Things is both subtle and abstract. Take the artwork for example, which features Leone’s back to the camera and shows her facing an ocean of uncertainty while appearing to struggle for balance. These are sensations that anyone who’s endured self-doubt or anxiety can attest to, and it sets the stage for what is to come. On the lead single ‘Once’, we get lines like “I forgot what I used to like about me”, a verse which feels cold and starkly isolated from others within the same passage. Cymbals echo in the background, rippling through the minimal folk soundscape like a heart slowly crumbling into a million unrecognizable pieces, while strings swell –distantly,
shyly – almost afraid to spread their warmth lest the narrator get hurt again. The music, almost by contrast to the album’s buried themes of hope and figurative motion, feels eerily
still. The majority of the experience floats by like an apparition, suspended in a foggy mist of carefully plucked acoustics and thoughtfully selected confessions. Aesthetic diversity is primarily achieved through variation in vocal tonality, which is all the more impactful when it
does occur due to its scarcity. One such example would be the penultimate ‘In The Morning’, where you can almost hear the color returning to her cheeks when she allows herself to yearn for the light: “In the night when I'm alone / How I long to be free in the morning when I wake.” She elevates her pitch just above a ghostly choir of
ahhs, which feels like more than mere happenstance with regard to thematic arrangement, as she sings “I wave as the sun leads me out, leads me out from my cage”, repeating the second part of the line over and over again for emphasis. Again, we don’t receive any grand instrumental displays or moments of obvious lyrical redemption – it’s a record of slow, subtle shifts. Leone’s moods are the album’s lifeblood, and as they sway, the album follows.
As one could certainly have anticipated from an album that confronts the vices of mental illness,
I’ve Felt All These Things primarily resides in dimly lit corners – not the occasional rays of sunlight that beam through its murky canopy. On ‘Remember’, we get insurmountable sadness with lines like “I remember tears, they never seemed to dry”, while the gut-wrenching ‘Love You Now’ seems to seize the final moments with a soon-to-be-departed: “I wrote my answers in a song and I cried / I held your hand like I was saying goodbye.” In all of these songs, Anna’s breathy but melodic voice recalls that of Adrianne Lenker’s, only perhaps less ambitious or outwardly confident. It’s definitely an introverted record, which contributes to an atmosphere that casual listeners might dismiss as homogeneous. Those willing to dive not only into the lyrics but also what Leone is saying via her tones, moods, and inflections will be the most rewarded by
I’ve Felt All These Things, a record that certainly requires a degree of empathy and a willingness to sort through its minimalist surface in search of greater depth and meaning.
As far as folk singer-songwriter debuts go, Leone’s is bounding with promise. Her willingness to lean on her voice and personal lyrics is both the record’s greatest asset as well as its sole detriment. As an emotional journey,
I’ve Felt All These Things is subtly moving, but catharsis is reliant on total investment on the part of the consumer. Her aesthetic going forward could be diversified on many levels (vocally, instrumentally, production), but it might drown out the dull ache of depression that defines this stripped-down piece.
I’ve Felt All These Things is the sort of record that kindred hearts can easily embrace, but starting upon such a bare canvas has also opened up endless avenues of potential for Anna’s future sound. She has the passion and voice to carry it wherever she wants to – and amid this dreary grayscale world that Leone has concocted, that's quite a silver lining.
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