EERA - Speak Review
Norwegian multi-musician matures to master the play with light and dark forces, dressed in goth-meets-grunge attire.
Under the name of EERA hides Anna Lena Bruland, a Norwegian and Berlin-based musician, who debuted in 2017 with an album ‘Reflections of Youth’, an exploration of the insecurities and anger a need to find purpose in the darkest spaces. Making the metaphysical holes home and reborn in the process, EERA comes back to the physical realm to show us how to balance. Even if the bridge behind us is burned and we’re too scared to move on. With new-gained confidence, she shares a new album, ‘Speak’.
EERA doesn’t wait for us to give her a hand but grabs it herself, and before we agree, she draws us into her dreary-weary world of ‘Solid Ground’. We drown in revamped Siouxsie and Banshees-like goth guitar loops and multiple-layered vocals. It’s a gate to the inner, subconscious dialogue stretched on the terrain of her now stronger psyche. Time to enter. Especially when ‘Falling Between The Ice’ lures us with enchanted, disguised as ethereal notes. There’s an almost palpable sense of suspense in the anxiously repeated beat that grows into grander percussion and organ-like sonic scenery. From anticipation to the sacrum, EERA switches between states freely. She carries on in ‘The Beat’, confronting past love with a sublime awareness. She wants answers but won’t accept sameness. ‘Never repeat the beat’, pierces as a mantra through the narrative that jumps from the grunge rock landscape to the haunted house on the hill. It’s all lined with a humming-echoey sound that leaves us a hypnotic scope for imagination and an alt-earworm.
‘Midnight’ might’ve been as well conceived by Sharon van Etten and Florence Welch under the velvety black sky. Its canvas stretches on the visual aesthetics of the previous track and sends us straight into the night with goosebumps. The sensation dissolves ‘Ladders’ pop-rock bang. Here Bruland takes a step to the end the self-sabotage. The victim of herself from the debut album dares to be braver. She strips from the sombre robes of first tracks, getting rid of the weight to reveal dream pop-tinted tones. ‘My Muse’ expands on the theme, leading with almost bare vocals and picking up distorted sounds as it unravels. We’re voyeurs on an emotional quest for inspiration. ‘I don’t think that you should follow me since I may cry’, EERA warns. Catharsis in solitude hits harder.
‘Unset Truths’ throws the gentlest shade of the album, slightly touching on a synth. It’s a standstill of a fleeting moment. A snapshot of the sweetness that comes with immersing in a feeling that ‘many times I felt so deeply’. Longing for adventure, in ‘This City’, EERA ventures on the more experimental Odyssey with Krautrock’s spirit as a guide that takes us from the rough-edged streets into ‘Speak’ an electric lullaby putting us to not sleep but into a trance. Despite the name, and its sublime-flirts-with-slightly-ragged nature, the track doesn’t speak, it screams. The message is the loudest on the album. Let your emotions out.
‘Outro (Woman)’ picks up from the scratchy sound on which ‘Speak’ departed, manifesting EERA on most self-realised: of the mystery of time and the mark it leaves on her identity as a person. Aware of the long road ahead, she owns up to new-found maturity without leaving a child-like innocence behind.
‘Speak’ is an array where light and dark forces come into play. Only now, unlike in her debut album, she’s in control. Instead of fighting the demons, Bruland dines with them. They exchange stories of past traumas, rebirth and tips for stepping a skin made of self-awareness and confidence.