While We Still Have The Light – Hanne Kolsto (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It shows how much the world has changed, that in this day and age the idea of an artist releasing 5 albums in 5 years is now seen as something unusual. But the world has changed, it may be smaller but it is also more demanding and as Hanne Kolsto comes to the end of this album cycle it is only natural that the thread running through the last instalment is one centred around goodbyes.

But if you are looking for closure, you don’t find it as easily as you would think. As closing chapters go it is a difficult one, there is still a restlessness that has existed since the release of the first album, Riot Break, still an unsettled nature to the songs, from skittering backbeats to soaring crescendos, fragile honesty to claustrophobic texturing.

This may be a goodbye to the task at hand but it still feels that all of its expansive soundscaping and dark, swirling beauty, its questioning lyricism and driving musicality is prompting  new beginning, the start of a journey rather than the culmination of one. As a wise man once said, “it is better to travel well than to arrive,” and Hanne Kolsto knows how to travel well.