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Laufey is at her most honest in “A Matter of Time.”

For the past three years, one artist has dominated my Spotify listening: Laufey. 

I first heard of her music a few months before her hit single, “From the Start,” was released. I began listening to her debut album, Everything I Know About Love (EIKAL), and I immediately fell in love. The combination of her rich timbre and jazz production in each song was so dreamy and ethereal. She quickly became my favorite musical artist. 

Three years and another album later, Laufey released her third studio album, A Matter of Time (AMOT), on Aug. 22. With four singles released prior to the album (“Silver Lining,” “Tough Luck,” “Lover Girl,” and “Snow White”), I was already positive I’d be just as enamored with it as I was with EIKAL and her second album, Bewitched. 

Laufey begins AMOT with time. A clock strikes to introduce “Clockwork,” a jazzy opener to the album’s soundscape. She explores the feeling of falling in love with a friend and the nerves surrounding it, with lyrics like “Words I’ll forget, deeply regret, he’ll run away” and “But like clockwork, think he fell in love with me.” The joy of love is expressed wonderfully through the bossa nova background and intimate, jazz club feeling. It’s a perfect way to start the album. 

One of my favorite songs off this album is “Carousel.” The carnival instrumentals and Laufey’s signature vocals allow the lyrics to shine, revealing her insecurities about her personality. Her passions are symbolized by “oddities” and “recurring comedies,” but rather than being viewed positively, Laufey frames them in a negative light, asking her lover whether they will accept her as she is. She asks, “Aren’t you sorry that you fell? / Onto this carousel.” However, with the light-hearted scatting interspersed throughout, the song carries a serene and melancholy tone. 

In contrast, “Too Little, Too Late” follows the perspective of a man in a relationship, yearning for a love he let slip past him—I’m reminded of Conrad Fisher from The Summer I Turned Pretty, Hae Sung from Past Lives, and Seb from La La Land each time I listen. After multiple streams, I’m convinced this song is one of Laufey’s strongest in story and sonics. 

A tense tempo crescendos right from the start with Laufey’s deep voice increasing in intensity as the song progresses. It’s a constant uphill, only reaching the climax when his lover is married to someone else. It’s reminiscent of the classic rom-com, when the man chases after his one true love in an airport or on a departing train. But instead of catching her right before she leaves forever, Laufey’s protagonist loses the fight. “I’ll toast outside your wedding day / Whisper vows, I’ll never say to you / ‘Cause it’s too little, all too late.” At the end, Laufey’s cello plays the melody of “Bewitched,” saying farewell to the feeling of eternal enchantment and all-encompassing love. 

In “Forget-Me-Not,” Laufey sings to her home country of Iceland. Composed as a soulful love letter, it envisions Laufey as a forget-me-not flower, destined to wither away if her home forgets her. Laufey paints the picture of her Icelandic childhood for the listener—“I miss the wind, stone-cold kiss on my cheeks / Bends in your body, the hope of your spring.” This is the only song on the album in which Laufey sings in Icelandic, underscoring the ballad’s importance and her connection to her heritage. 

Finally, the closing track, “Sabotage,” illustrates the chaos within AMOT, shocking the listener out of their dreamlike state with a stormy instrumental medley. On first listen, the production threw me off guard until I realized the purpose. The song starts deceptively calm, with a hint of a cello “scream” note to foreshadow the upcoming mayhem. Laufey sings, “It’s just a matter of time ‘til you see the dagger / It’s a special of mine to cause disaster,” displaying her tendency to self-sabotage due to anxiety surrounding relationships. With the orchestral pandemonium, she sabotages her own song. 

Put simply, A Matter of Time is a triumph. Successfully blending both pop and jazz influences, Laufey delivers yet another timeless album. With blends of every emotion surrounding love, the album takes listeners on a journey of yearning and delight. I’ll be listening to this album again and again, feeling serenity and sorrow with each nuanced lyric and note. With the addition of AMOT to her wondrous discography, Laufey stands out as a star, curating her own sound that will be heard by generations of jazz lovers.