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Loud voices are egotistical, but quiet ones can be too. The softly spoken person insists that we block out everything else to hear them. We have to concentrate extra hard on their words.
This covert power play is key to the hushed world of Erika de Casier’s songs. The Danish singer-songwriter has the softest of voices, a murmurous tone that holds centre stage without exerting itself. The style is R&B, a genre famous for vocal ornament. De Casier and her regular co-producer Natal Zaks don’t so much flatten it out as give it a diminuendo gloss. Meanwhile, the songs transpose R&B’s focus on sex and romantic drama to a sleekly drawn landscape of office work, grey Copenhagen skies, faces on screens and bodies in beds. All this is done in a knowing way, but not archly.
Still is her third album. Its 2021 successor Sensational was widely praised. It also follows her biggest sales success yet as a songwriter, co-writing a hit EP released last year by the K-pop girl group NewJeans. Still’s title tells us that her softly-softly approach remains unchanged. We might also detect, if we listen closely, a distant echo of the “still small voice” with which the all-powerful God is said to speak in the Old Testament.
An act of listening is implied by the 14 tracks. Each is addressed to a “you”. When this intended listener takes form, he is a man. Singing in lightly accented American English, de Casier recounts a series of romantic ups and downs, from infatuation (“Lucky”) to post-split solitude (“Someone”). The music is feathery and subtly detailed, with hints of drum-and-bass, pop balladry and throwback Timbaland hooks. As with de Casier’s singing, we must listen closely to appreciate all that’s going on.
“Ice” features US rap duo They Hate Change as complaining boyfriends, while “My Day Off” finds de Casier murmuring her anger at a pestering ex. A sly vein of comedy runs through these scenarios. The central irony of whisper singing, lowering one’s voice while insisting on being heard, isn’t lost on this fine exponent of the art.
★★★★☆
‘Still’ is released by 4AD
