“Get nothing done, then there’s nothing wrong / I have been undone,” Naima Bock sings off her latest album of lush chamber folk tunes called Below a Massive Dark Land. Her strong voice with a soft edge is the highlight of the record, with its London lilt. Interestingly, much of the album was created with the help of the violin, an instrument that does not feature on the album, but the melodies match the pathos of the lyrics which talk about growing old, the complexity of relationships, and the repeating image of stars.

The songs were started in a solitary fashion in her grandmother’s shed in South London, but the arrangements with an array of instruments, including trumpets, saxophones, violin, bright guitar and popping drums show that this is a communal affair. There is the interplay on the album, however, between the solitary and the communal life. “Oh go, my mind it aches / when I’m asked / to know my place.” It seems like that is both a personal and societal conundrum. The album starts with “Gentle,” one of the poppiest songs on the album, for example, which talks about the expectation of women being gentle and fragile. “You want me to be gentle, fragile / You want me to stay young.” “I pray that I stay gentle, fragile / I pray that I stay.”

She conspicuously leaves out “young” on the end of the line, and much of the album is piecing together her sometimes vague storytelling and filling our own personal situations and experiences in the blanks. It is clear that Naima is dealing with feeling comfortable in her own skin as she ages like “wild weeds grow.” There is a great deal of range on the album, like the gentleness of the piano-laden waltzer of “Lines” and the power punch of the single “Kaley,” the guitar-picked folkiness of “Further Away” and the surprise ending of the brief but affecting “Star.”

“I feel like / I used to have a star / That has now died / Or gone to grace another / I cannot find / This star that once was mine,” the album ends in a something of a whimper, after many a bold and gentle, intimate and exclamatory moment. It is an intimate record in many ways, but something that you could throw on and get carried away by the grand compositions on many of the songs. I think that is the most successful dynamic of the record, that it is a solid album of songs, no matter how deep you get into Naima’s mythology, something to satisfy the folk listener, the pop listener, the indie listener, all.

order Below a Massive Dark Land by Naima Bock HERE