Nineteenth-century Romantics transformed autumn into an aesthetic object worthy of philosophical contemplation. Kerouac sought eternal summer on American roads, trying to outrun his own shadow. Indie musicians of the 2000s built entire careers on nostalgia for times that never existed in the ideal form preserved by collective memory. Fleet Foxes turned the changing of seasons into baroque pastorals, Sufjan Stevens clothed autumnal meditations in folk orchestrations, and Bon Iver made winter isolation a brand.

In this context, Sloe Paul’s attempt to capture the fleetingness of August and the inevitability of September in “Searching/Finding“ appears interesting at minimum and ambitious at maximum. The album positions itself as a portal between two states: the warmth of carefreeness and the cold of reflection, the lightness of July and the weight of October contemplations. This is territory explored from Nick Drake’s “Five Leaves Left” to Elliott Smith’s later work. Sloe Paul enters this tradition with nine songs, each functioning as a separate chamber in the common labyrinth of seasonal transformation.

“VenusWeeks” opens the album with a vocal line where anxiety and hope exist in fragile, almost crystalline equilibrium. Here Sloe Paul works with the dynamics of light and shadow, creating the equivalent of the twilight hour—that moment when day still holds on but night is already felt in the air. Abbrecht’s vocals carry a contradictory mixture of emotions: sadness about the past coexists with timid optimism about the future, fatigue intermingles with anticipation. This is a ray of hope penetrating through autumn sky clouds—not bright enough to blind, but persistent enough to attract attention. The track’s instrumental foundation is built on minimalist guitar patterns that create a sense of space and air, allowing it to develop organically.

“Badger” is constructed around organ parts that give the track an almost liturgical dimension. The organ sounds from the very first seconds—majestic, solemn, almost Gothic in its darkly beautiful quality. This is an instrument that, personally for me, is associated with church spaces, with rituals of farewell and transition, and Sloe Paul uses these cultural connotations to their fullest extent.

“Joy Will Find You” shifts focus entirely to vocal confession. The instrumental component here functions more as an atmospheric background, an elegant frame for a painting, rather than as an equal participant in dialogue. Sloe Paul throws open the doors to his inner world, allowing emotions to flow uncensored. In his voice you can hear fear and confidence, sadness and hope, hopelessness and vigor—all coexisting simultaneously, creating a complex emotional palette. The track demands active, engaged listening.

“Winter in Vegas”—possibly the album’s most cinematic composition. The track’s title is paradoxical in itself—winter in Vegas, a city of eternal summer and artificial light, a city where seasons lose meaning in windowless casinos. This geographical and conceptual mismatch creates an additional layer of meaning: the possibility of cold where it usually isn’t, the possibility of transformation in the most unexpected places. The melody possesses an enveloping quality—it doesn’t attack the listener but gently surrounds them, creating a cocoon of safety. Sloe Paul’s vocals here dissolve into the instrumental fabric, becoming part of the overall sonic picture. This is a conscious choice that allows guitars and atmospheric synthesizer layers to come to the foreground.

The closing “Mountain” returns to the confessional format, but this time the burden of sadness feels sharper, deeper. The track ends with an open finale, refusing to put a period at the end of the story the album tells. This is a comma, a pause, an invitation to continue. On one hand, such a decision provokes personal creative interpretation of what’s been heard—each listener can write the story’s continuation as they see fit. On the other hand, this incompleteness leaves a slight aftertaste of dissatisfaction, a desire to hear the final resolution that the artist stubbornly avoids.

The riddle of “Searching/Finding” lies in how comfortable the artist feels within the established boundaries of the genre. Sloe Paul moves along the well-trodden path of seasonal melancholy, rarely allowing himself to deviate, to explore territories that could be dangerous. The album at times suffers from excessive caution—where risk could appear, the artist chooses the safety of tested formulas.

However—and this is an important “however“—it’s precisely this restraint, this refusal of dramatic gestures and loud declarations that ultimately works in the album’s favor and its concept. When my news feed is simply teeming with aggressive statements, forced emotions, and music that screams about its importance, Sloe Paul’s quiet confidence feels like an act of resistance. This is an album for an era tired of loudness, for a moment when a whisper is heard better than a scream simply because everyone else is shouting. The production quality on the album is impeccable—each musician (and there are quite a few here) occupies their precise place in the mix, creating a voluminous, almost tactile texture that you want to touch with your hands.

“Searching/Finding” demands attention, an investment of time if you will, but generously rewards those ready to accept these conditions. This is an album that grows with repeated listens, revealing layers that remain unnoticed on the first, superficial contact. Sloe Paul has created work that honestly explores the space between loss and acceptance, between memory and the present moment, between the desire to hold on and the necessity to let go. And in this honesty, in the readiness to be vulnerable and slow in our time that values speed, lies its main achievement. “Searching/Finding” is a companion album for those evenings when you simply need to sit by the window and watch how the light changes, how leaves fall, how time does its work, turning summer into autumn, youth into maturity, searching into finding.

*This review was made possible by SubmitHub