Big Fox - See How The Light Falls (2020)

“Sometimes songs are like secret rooms where you can say things that you don’t say anywhere else,” says Big Fox’s Charlotta Perers. If songs are like secret rooms for Perers to whisper into, the end result becomes a secret portal for listeners to travel through, landing in a place equally as magical, tranquil and revelatory. On her third album Perers continues her exploration of beautifully tender songs, led by her rich yet airy voice, deft accompaniment, production that crackles as warmly as a log fire and textures that glide gracefully between the delicate and immersive. However, this album – which weaves between dream pop ambience and skilfully crafted songs - finds itself being released six years since her last album Now. It was initially due for release in May 2018 but Perers received some news that derailed it. “A few weeks before the album was supposed to be released I was diagnosed with lymphoma,” she says. “It all happened very quickly and it was almost like entering a parallel world with a different time scale, rules and priorities. It felt almost like being forced on to one of those ghost trains in a theme park, going in and out of tunnels and not knowing when or how or even if I would be able to get off.”

The whole process also allowed a deeper sense of perspective to come to light for Perers. “Life suddenly became very intense, very here and now - but that amplified positive experiences too. I realized how deeply our happiness is connected to our expectations. If I didn’t expect or demand things of life I could actually be quite happy just playing Yahtzee all day. But it felt good to know that the album was waiting for me on the other side. It was a reminder of something else, the someone I was outside the hospital.”

18 months down the line, Perers is better and “slowly reclaiming my life back” but the added gestation period for the album has added a new density, meaning and significance to the work. “When I listen to it now I actually like the album even more,” she says. “I have some distance from it. When you’re in the middle of the process, it's easy to get caught up in the details and not really hear the song anymore. Recently when I started listening to the album, after not listening to it for months, I even got this strange feeling of...have we really made this?”