ΣTELLA - Adagio

The time has come for Stella Chronopoulou to catch her breath, ease off the oars, and travel back through memory to her childhood and the recollections of the Athenian suburbs where the musician grew up. To walk calmly, rediscover slowness, savor the creativity that only slowness can generate: "Adagio", precisely, an album built with methodical gradualness, with all the calm that entails, the fruit of a life that needed to be relived and reworked before it could finally be told. Once again under the wing of Sub Pop, with whom she released "Up And Away" three years ago, Σtella (strictly with the initial sigma) pushes her pop instincts to their extreme consequences, tinting them with great chromatic variety and narrative character; in doing so, the Greece within her surfaces in all its magical spontaneity.

It's not the first time the musician has drawn on her "Greekness" within one of her projects, but never before has it become such an integral part of the conversation, especially given that Greek is finally being used at the lyrical level too. From the cover of "Ta vimata", one of the best-loved songs by Litsa Sakellariou (one of the most significant voices of the "neo kyma" that emerged between the Sixties and Seventies), to the delicate psychedelia enclosed in "Omorfo mou", Chronopoulou's mother tongue becomes a fundamental element, the touch that carries the whole record to the next level.

It matters little that the rest of the songs revert to the usual English, because Σtella's Greece emerges forcefully throughout the album: between Aristotelian references (the Antena-like vibrations of "Too Poor"), childhood holidays (the laid-back chill-funk mood of the instrumental "Corfu"), hints of lyra and mandolin, everything revolves around old photo albums, the dust and the sun the musician breathed in during her youth.

Moving between vibrant acoustic sketches (it's hard not to think of Kings Of Convenience in the melody, lightly tinged with bossa nova echoes, of "80 Days"), sun-drenched tropical paths ("Baby Brazil"), melancholy carried on the tip of percussion (Holiday reimagined in the rhythmic breaks of "Adagio"), Chronopoulou's music progresses slowly, yes, but luxuriantly, full of accents and nuances that heighten its melodic grain and richness of references. To relive Greece itself, to savor it fully with all the messages and warnings it carries. I hate you adagio, I want you, you see, forever for me.

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28/01/2026