Album art by Daria Hlazatova

Style: Art rock, progressive pop, indie rock (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Bent Knee, Laufey, Radiohead, My Brightest Diamond
Release date: 7 August 2026

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At my increasingly-jaded age, it’s a rare feeling to have a piece of music leap out at me immediately, grab me by the throat and proclaim its own excellence so loudly and convincingly that within its first couple minutes its status as a masterpiece is written on my very bones. A couple years ago, though, Canadian singer-songwriter Emily Steinwall accomplished that very feat with the masterful opening title track of her debut full-length Welcome to the Garden. Over its ten-plus minutes, it crafted a breathtaking journey through frightful yet gorgeous mindscapes, combining stomping early-metal riffs, powerfully dynamic vocals, and some damn tasty saxophone into a sound that was both ’70s-retro and distinctly original. And while the rest of the album didn’t quite live up to such a sterling standard, it was still lush and fantastical enough to establish Steinwall as a standout new talent in the scene, one whose subsequent work was decidedly worth anticipating. Now, five years after that album’s release, she has returned with a new opus, the oddly-capitalized but, there’s beauty in the fall from Grace. Has Steinwall managed to capture lightning in a bottle once more, or has her music fallen a bit too far back down to Earth?

From the start of the album’s release cycle, Steinwall made it fairly clear that this record would take a markedly different emotional tack from its predecessor rather than simply being Welcome (Back) to the Garden. Her site notes that Grace is meant to represent the opposite side of the coin from the “cosmic euphoria” of Garden, channeling the chaos of current events and her own personal travails into an album that fights to make peace with the “terrifying unknown”. And, indeed, the two advance singles (and first two tracks) of the album both showcase a palpable shift towards a darker, more direct energy in which Steinwall hangs up her saxophone in favor of a guitar and simply rocks out. “Soft Animal” starts with a base of shimmering, Radiohead-esque guitar arpeggios and nervy percussion that grows to a big climax led by Steinwall’s soaring vocals, with the end result resembling a less-neurotic Bent Knee, while “Human Anymore” pounds out distorted garage-rock riffs beneath an uncharacteristically sneering vocal performance that recalls the pissed-off girl-power grunge of Hole. It hits with the force of her best work, if not quite the sophistication, and hearing these songs ahead of time made me cautiously optimistic that, so long as the deep cuts re-incorporated that compositional ambition (and killer sax) while still keeping that darker tone, Grace could be a distinct yet worthy successor to her incredibly promising debut.

And now, the rest of the album has arrived, and for some inexplicable reason, it all just… falls off. Well, maybe “falls” is too violent of a word—given the stubbornly languid tempos and gentle arrangements found through most of these seven new songs’ runtime, I’d say it… sleepwalks off, stumbling away from its promised intensity with only a few spots of genuine fervor and lucidity sprinkled in. Indeed, from the gently swaying waltzes of “There Is a Light” and “No One Wins a War” to the feathery, easy-listening pulse of “Rock Me, Baby” and the aptly-titled “Slow Burn”, a majority of the material here is the diametric opposite of the dark, unsettled vibe the album had conjured up by the end of Track 2, far more of a cozy, vaguely melancholy exhale than the scream of a damaged soul struggling to come to terms with an equally damaged world. The worst offender is “Something”, whose minimalistic, sleepy palette of vocals, strummed acoustic guitar, and floaty pedal steel accompaniment wouldn’t be as much of an issue (a) if it didn’t go on for nearly seven minutes and (b) if it weren’t preceded by a literal lullaby in the form of “Rock Me Baby”. What’s more, Steinwall only breaks out the sax for one track¹ in “Slow Burn”, and while it’s certainly a great moment, one that made me audibly sigh in relief on first listen in fact, it also shows just how strangely unused her considerable talents on the instrument are here, as though she were fighting with a hand tied behind her back.

It’s a shame, too, because aside from the sluggish drain on the pacing caused by shoving them all together, most of these ballads are quite lovely when taken on their own, and would make for excellent breathers on an album that had more edge past its first two tracks. Steinwall’s vocals are, as ever, absolutely superb throughout, showing off her sizable range from breathy, warm lows to a commanding, banshee-like wail that only gets truly broken out on a couple occasions on Grace but always leaves an impression when it does. With her rapid, quavering vibrato and propensity for layering on choirs of backing vocals straight out of a 1930s movie melodrama, there’s a distinctly vintage quality to her performances reminiscent of Laufey‘s more low-key work. The production, too, is on point, with guitars surrounded by pillowy layers of reverb and crisp, organic-sounding percussion that all feels warm and immersive. And for all my complaints of the monotonously slow tempos, there are a few moments of vigor that break through the sleepy haze and remind us just how great Steinwall’s music can be when she’s giving it her all. Take the back halves of “No One Wins a War” and “There Is a Light”, whose maximalist crescendos, led by Steinwall’s keening high register and Kirk Macdonald’s killer sax feature respectively, hit with extremely welcome force. The clear highlight, though, is “Free Spirit”, an eight-minute journey that, despite being built on the same drowsy waltz tempo as much of the rest of Grace, has a genuinely potent dynamic buildup and climax that manages to recall the grandiose ambition of Garden‘s title track, even if it’s not quite in the same league.

In the end, but, there’s beauty in the fall from Grace ends up being a bit more unfortunately apropos a title than Emily Steinwall likely intended. It’s indisputably a fall from the dizzying heights of her debut, a confused record that flirts briefly with a heavier, angrier direction before abruptly spurning said direction in favor of an excess dose of floaty, fluffy balladry. And yet, even in her sophomore slump, Steinwall is talented enough to craft some moments of genuine beauty, with top-shelf vocal work, resolutely pretty melodies and arrangements, and evocative lyrics that center around a wounded heart’s desire to heal enough to feel love again. Ironically enough, though, this pursuit of beauty and healing seems to be what led to that fall in the first place, creating a record that, past its initial moment of catharsis, is often too focused on sounding “pretty” to truly reach its full potential. Perhaps, after this bit of healing, Steinwall can fully spread her wings in future projects. But, for now, she’s mostly stuck moving slowly, backwards and forwards.

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Recommended tracks: Soft Animal, Human Anymore, Free Spirit
You may also like: Mingjia, Sans Froid, Marjana Semkina
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Official Site | Instagram

Emily Steinwall is:
– Emily Steinwall – Vocals, Guitar, Flute (tracks 5,7,9) , Saxophone (track 6) , Harp (track 5)
With guests:
– Joseph Martel – Guitar (tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8)
– Jeremiah Pick – Guitar (tracks 1, 3, 7)
– Michael Eckert – Pedal Steel (tracks 4, 5, 6, 8)
– Bjorn Kriel – Organ (tracks 7, 8, 9)
– Jackson Steinwall – Bass
– Andrew McCarthy – Drums
– Lala Noel – Vocals (tracks 4, 6, 7)
– Daisy Progosh – Vocals (track 3)
– Dorothy Progosh – Vocals (track 3)
– Kirk Macdonald – Saxophone (track 8)

1.  There is technically a second song with saxophone, namely “There Is a Light”, but that part was not played by Steinwall but by Canadian jazz veteran Kirk Macdonald. ↩︎