Kieli - From Summer to Spring (2023) Hi Res

Kieli is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and composer Elin Pöllänen. Kieli’s artistic expression is inspired by her Swedish-Finnish-Karelian roots. On her multilingual debut album From Summer to Spring, due out on May 26th via Cognitive Shift (PJ Harvey & Harry Escott, Roger Goula), Kieli invites the listener to a cinematic soundscape that is simultaneously beautiful, ingenuous, uplifting, and melancholic.

From Summer to Spring explores the emotions that arise in life-changing transitions; grief, exhaustion and worry, but also feelings of hope, gratitude and unconditional love. “From Summer to Spring is a very personal album that I wrote during a life-changing time,” explains Elin. It is a personal portrait of a daughter and her father during their last years together, as well as the experience of being a caregiver to someone who is disappearing, yet as close to you as they will ever be. “Amidst the fear, music really became the most attentive and merciful language that I could use to communicate with myself and explore my emotions so that I stayed resilient and open to life,” she explains.

Throughout the album’s nine songs, Kieli expertly blends cinematic indie-folk with neo-classical composition and swirling electronica, creating mystical and surreal soundscapes. Non-verbal and verbal vocals sung in Swedish, Finnish, English and the endangered Karelian language Livvi all help to evoke the many parallel feelings she experienced during this time.

The album opens with ‘Cranes’, one of the two instrumental pieces found on the album. The track was inspired by the annual arrival of the cranes that reside on the meadow outside of Pöllänen’s family home, an event which always signals the start of Spring. The changing of the seasons is a recurring motif across the album, representing the transitions experienced in life.

Mystical yet grounded with ethereal timbres of kanteles and accordion, ‘Palavu’ is sung in both English and Livvi and presents the possibility of an inclusive and liberated world with empowerment, community, and resistance to oppression at its core. “It is a song about moving and being moved by the fire within and around us,” says Elin. “I was inspired by a particular family tradition: on Maundy Thursday, we invite people over and gather around the bonfire and visualise what kind of world that should grow out of the ashes.”

For years, Pöllänen has worked as a researcher exploring human relations to other animals and nature. ‘O’ is a marching anthem for the power of grief with particular reference to mass extinction, a tragedy she says is “upheld by indifference and separation”. “I wanted ‘O’ to portray a sense of wonder for our planet and the impactful everyday encounters with nature that are often taken for granted,” she says. “The song processes complex emotions, such as a kind of modern nostalgia: a deep longing for an interconnected and living world - a world that already exists, but that we are at risk of losing due to our inability to act and join the movement that already exists,” she continues.

‘Amaranthine’ is another highlight. It’s a song about searching for something everlasting and endless whilst experiencing great loss. The soundscape and cropped vocals in Finnish are emotional, restless and agitated by the feeling of alienation from life and not being able to escape or alter its conditions. Despite the frustration, the song is transcendent and ends in a restful church-like echo, a resolution that, to Elin, represents her acceptance that the only constant in life is change, and unconditional love is the force that keeps us moving.

Despite its weighty subject matter, From Summer To Spring is an album that also feels hopeful, and celebrates life. “I will forever be grateful that I got to walk alongside my father as a daughter and caregiver and that in our home, integrity, love and joy reigned, and routines became sacred rituals” says Pöllänen. “I really hope the album can offer people a place to rest, move, mourn, or even rejoice, like it has done for me.”