The organic instrumentation of “16” is quickly followed by the electronic “Remember Me,” whose style is expanded upon further in the pop oriented “A Beautiful Life.” Both tracks are exceptional showcases of Solberg’s vocal range, with the former offering some of the singer’s most tender vocals to date while the latter demonstrates how intense Solberg can get. “16” finds the accomplished Norwegian composer collaborating with experimental cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne, and the two are able to cook up a compelling rumination on the state of one’s mental health as the world begins to turn gray (even if the lyrics are rather oblique). It’s evident from the get-go with the haunting and moody title track.

Emotionally, I’m a bit of everything, so it covers the entire emotional spectrum!”Ĭonsidering the turbulent emotions on display across ’16,’ it’s rather fitting that Solberg took the backbone of the Leprous sound and twisted it to fit the personal narrative that plays throughout the record. It’s also about some of the career-defining moments, like the moment I started playing with the band and began to find a community to belong to. But this album is not only about the bad things.

A lot of pretty drastic things happened within those three years. As Solberg has explained it, the album documents the time “when I kind of lost my innocence and I started realising that life is serious and bad shit can happen. Side projects are to be expected from creatives who deign to stretch their wings and experiment, yet what proves striking about Einar Solberg’s ‘16’ is how perfectly it fits within the trajectory of his work with Leprous.Ĭonceptually, ‘16’ follows the same track of previous Leprous albums in its exploration of mental health, anxiety, and depression.

Prog-rock seems to be a notable exception to this phenomenon, wherein many of the genre’s top talents have balanced solo careers with their more lucrative roles as the voice of a larger institution. Whenever a singer puts out a solo album, there’s always a concern they will go pop and leave their band behind to rot.

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