unskilled laughter

The sweetness on this album is, as ever, hard-won and transporting, but it comes in the midst of palpable uncertainty, even hopelessness. It’s no longer delivered in a purely heroic, adrenaline-spiking blitz. Instead, “Honey” is loose and free and physical. It captures and concretizes the wordless, ephemeral moments of bliss and sorrow that come when you’re in a crush of strangers, unsure of the future. It marks a new phase in Robyn’s ongoing project, in which the force of her conviction continues to hold together what often seems impossible, musically or otherwise: maximum sadness, felt as the bedrock of absolute joy.

I drink from a small spring, my thirst exceeds the ocean.