Simeon Kirkegaard’s album “*” arrived, and it’s been rattling around my head like loose change in an empty pocket ever since. This Nordic musician dives headfirst into the murky, churning waters of lost love and the obsessive echo it leaves behind across ten distinct yet interwoven tracks. It maps out a landscape not just of longing, but of the peculiar haunting that follows a severed connection, the feeling of being perpetually shadowed by someone who isn’t there.

The sound itself mirrors this internal conflict – a richly layered blend where rock’s driving edge scrapes against shimmering pop hooks and the thoughtful space of indie textures. Guitars chime with a nervous energy, sometimes building into insistent walls, while the rhythm section provides a pulse that feels both relentless and hesitant, like pacing a familiar room. Kirkegaard’s voice carries the core vulnerability; it delivers poetic lyrics detailing isolation and fixation with a clarity that’s almost painful, like trying to read a deeply personal letter over someone’s shoulder.

There’s a moment, buried somewhere in the album’s hypnotic flow, where a particular combination of melody and lyric brought to mind the specific quiet after a sudden downpour stops – everything damp and gleaming, but unnervingly still. That’s the strange atmosphere “*” conjures: the hyper-vividness of memory meeting the stark silence of absence. It’s less about sadness, more about the sheer, consuming presence of the past.

This isn’t an album offering easy answers or a clean break. It dwells expertly in the uncomfortable, grey territory of ‘stuckness’, the exhausting cycle of yearning, and that fragile, almost invisible thread of hope for escape that somehow makes the despair feel even sharper. It’s raw, intensely focused, like watching someone meticulously trying to repair something beautiful that’s fundamentally, irrevocably broken.

Kirkegaard charts this emotional terrain with unflinching honesty. But listening to “*”, you can’t help but ponder: how long can you navigate by the stars of a vanished sky before you lose your way entirely?

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