The Berlin musician Stella Sommer has transformed her third solo album into a double album: “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” comprises a total of 24 songs – a work that revolves around the dark side of life.
Lugubrious sounds with melancholy and dark themes are what Stella Sommer’s music has always been. So it was in 2018 when he started the band project Die Heiterkeit and it is so today, with what is now his third solo album. But nevertheless, “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” arrives with a newfound warmth that was previously atypical for the singer was. While the work still revolves around themes of loneliness, worry and inner sadness, the songwriter goes along with those sentiments. The same goes for silence, as the album title “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” reveals: “In the end, even silence seems like she doesn’t really want to be alone and longs for someone to be with her – even if it’s just for one night,” the singer said of her album.
Thus he creates a completely new, indulgent world, the emergence of which, according to Stella Sommer, is completely natural: “When you start writing an album, you really live in it for a few months and I thought to myself, then at least I can get it set good.Then you have a wonderful world.
On the other hand, what hasn’t changed on “Silence Wore A Silver Coat” is one of Stella Sommer’s biggest trademarks: namely her surprisingly deep and guttural singing voice, which repeatedly leads to comparisons with Hildegard Knef or Nico from the Velvet Underground.
Anyone who now wants to continue listening to them and is generally interested in the album will be out of luck, at least as far as the streaming platforms are concerned: Stella Sommer has decided not to release her album on Spotify, Apple Music and Co. “I think even as an independent artist you don’t have to put up with everything,” Sommer says on the subject. “Spotify itself is actually a very anti-album medium, the only thing that could theoretically work there is singles. But even then you have to say Spotify still doesn’t pay artists fairly.” She’s right and might encourage one or the other to put an album by their favorite artist under the Christmas tree.
Incidentally, “Silence Wore a Silver Coat” is also reminiscent of Christmas in many places, with its powerful choirs and solemn wind and string instruments. Even though Stella Sommer thinks her music actually sounds more like autumn, she has to admit that at least some of her songs have something festive shimmering through them—a happy coincidence and therefore the perfect soundtrack for December.
Lena Clasen
1. Only one thunder in November
2. Silence wore a silver coat
3. A body of strange beauty
4. Under the weeping mulberry tree
5. In my darkness
6. A matter of days
7. From the edge of a dream
8. Winter queen (in summer)
9. Selling delusion
10. Lily
11. Frozen air
12. Wild patience
13. Known and unknown
14. Grief had a brother
15. Run to the wasteland
16. Like drops of water on leaves
17. The hair of the rain
18. London tooth
19. The sky was empty
20. A special kind of bewilderment
21. All things return
22. The Lady of the South Seas
23. Emptiness follows
24. All Saints and all the dead
