For years Said The Sky has been the guy you queue up when you need to feel worse before you feel better, producing a discography akin to a survival guide for the brokenhearted. But the producer’s stunning new album Closer To The Sun finds him stepping into warmer light without abandoning the vulnerability that made him essential listening for anyone who’s ever ugly-cried to electronic music.
That shift is immediately clear in the album’s opener “Welcome Home,” where Said The Sky, whose real name is Trevor Christensen, addresses his inner child with the kind of tenderness that could crack open even the most jaded listener. A guide to growing up without giving up, the track functions as a conversation with the part of himself that got left behind during the inevitable march toward adulthood, and its bubbly production mirrors that sense of rediscovery. When he sings about lungs finally breathing, you believe him.
That newfound oxygen fuels the album’s strongest run. “Are You With Me” recruits Justin Jesso for a progressive house anthem that asks one of life’s most terrifying questions while refusing to spiral into despair. Christensen doesn’t solve his narrator’s loneliness, but makes peace with facing it alongside someone else. Elsewhere, the synth-soaked “Gotta Get To You” continues this upward trajectory, its honeyed guitar licks and burning-eyes urgency capturing the desperation of missing someone who feels like home.
The title of “Halfway There” becomes both literal and metaphorical as Emma Rosen achingly delivers lines with underwater castle imagery. It’s a song about perseverance disguised as a festival anthem, the kind of track that makes you realize Christensen has gotten remarkably good at hiding medicine inside sugar.
Longtime fans of Said The Sky will find solace in “Before The World Falls Apart,” a future bass tearjerker that offers the album’s most compelling argument: if everything’s ending anyway, we might as well scar each other beautifully. Here, RYVM’s vocals carry the weight of someone dancing in the wreckage of their own reckless abandon: “Maybe you could break my heart / Before there’s nothing left to scar / I feel like we’re in life just once / Before the world falls apart / Maybe we could leave our mark / Before all of the skies go dark.”
The album closes with one of its standouts, “Icarus,” where Christensen fully commits to its concept by flying straight toward disaster with eyes wide open. He produces clouds you can walk on while Elijah Noll insists his head belongs there, turning the Greek tragedy into a motivational poster by singing about delusional thinking like it’s a superpower rather than a character flaw. In other words, if flying too close to the sun means burning out on your own terms, that beats playing it safe.
Out now via Seeking Blue, Closer To The Sun is Said The Sky’s third album and first in over three years. You can listen below and find it on streaming platforms here.
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