Some albums feel like statements, while others like transformations. Susan Style’s debut album ‘Only a broken heart can hold the world’ documents a complete unravelling and reassembly of self, told through a sound that is as expansive as the journey behind it.
There’s a striking sense of duality running through the record. On one side, you have the precision of carefully sculpted electronic frameworks, meticulously placed textures, and a producer’s instinct for detail. While on the other, there’s emotional volatility with songs that feel like they’re constantly shifting, stretching, and searching for solid ground. And it’s in this tension that the album truly thrives.
From the opening moments, Susan establishes an identity that refuses to sit still. Rhythms pulse beneath shimmering layers, while melodies emerge and dissolve like fleeting thoughts. There’s a cinematic quality to the way everything unfolds, as if each track is part of a larger, interconnected narrative rather than a standalone piece.
What makes this record so compelling is its sense of movement. There’s a constant push toward expansion, toward understanding, toward something just out of reach. And yet, the album never loses its sense of intimacy. Even at its most layered and texturally dense, there’s always a human core at the centre.
Tracks like ‘A Fling’ and ‘For You’ offer moments of melodic clarity, where the emotional weight is distilled into something direct and immediate. Elsewhere, the record leans further into experimentation, embracing abstraction and atmosphere to create something more elusive and exploratory. ‘Weird In A Good Way’ stands out as a bold, kinetic moment, its energy feeling almost communal in its release.
The title-track acts as a kind of emotional axis, pulling together the album’s themes into a single, evolving soundscape. It guides us through dissonance into something more open and accepting.
Susan Style’s voice is another key element in this journey. Whether delivered through clear melodic lines or woven into the texture of the production, it carries a sense of vulnerability that anchors the record. There’s a fluidity to her expression that mirrors the album’s broader themes of identity and change.
Ultimately, ‘Only a broken heart can hold the world’ is about expansion through rupture. It’s about what happens when the structures you rely on fall away, and what you choose to build in their place. Here, Susan Style has created an entire world that feels as fragile as it is vast, and as personal as it is universal.
