ELIZA - The Darkening Green

Four years have passed since the previous “A Sky Without Stars”, which marked the second official debut of Eliza Sophie Caird, formerly Eliza Doolittle and for some time now known simply as Eliza. Four years spent first releasing remixes of that previous work (“ASWS: Sketches & Remixes”, 2023), then a live album (“Live At RAK”, 2023), followed by a collaboration with Bicep (“CHROMA 008”, 2025) and the singles that paved the way for the new record.

“The Darkening Green”, co-produced with Phiro and EMIL, confirms the shift undertaken with the previous album and the name change: a dark, introspective R&B, hypnotic and dreamlike, in which the voice still flickers among trip-hop and downtempo beats. But where the starting point used to be essentially electro, here the choice is to build from acoustic instruments, some quite unusual, like the bansuri flute, or homemade percussion, in keeping with a more tactile, natural approach. Hence the rim shots on hand-modified snares, hits on domestic objects or natural surfaces, and minimal percussion like muted hi-hats or improvised shakers.

This choice is consistent with the album's thematic core, which folds self-reflection and social commentary into an ecological meditation on the relationship between urban space and nature, between the grey of post-industrial concrete and the green of plants.

Among the nine tracks, “For The Hell Of It” opens with its languid, hypnotic pace; “Anyone Else”, already released as a single, is a love song with echoes of nineties r'n'b, a sound shared with the following “Fever Dreams” and with “Cheddar”, about alienation and exploitation. “Major” meditates on self-love, with the bansuri making an appearance. A change of pace comes with “Pleasure Boy” and its sensual disco groove, hinting at Prince; “Spiral” takes a more Afro-leaning approach, which softens in the chorus; what doesn't soften, though, is the social anger, as the closing “Because We Can” and “Zombie-Like” make clear.

As in the previous album, the songs flow into one another without interruption, boring and captivating the listener with equal force; from this point of view, it's a true ambient album for the streaming age, one in which boredom can be just as powerful as the fascination with the atmosphere it manages to evoke and sustain.

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12/04/2026