Lisa Akuah - Golden Seams (2025)

* contains tracks in various sample rates.

A refreshing perspective and a unique voice helps “Golden Seams” stand out from a slew of similar singer-songwriter offerings. “Everything that left a crack in me / A break / A gap / A piece amiss / I fill them all with gold,” sings Berlin singer-songwriter Lisa Akuah on the title track of her second LP “Golden Seams”. What she is describing is kintsugi – the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer coated in gold – and it was with the philosophy behind this practice in mind that she decided to create the album: mistakes should be seen as something to highlight and turn into something beautiful rather than being something to conceal with shame.

While the music throughout is quite beautiful, it’s Akuah’s voice that is the real star of the show: with a pretty rise and fall, her ethereal and captivating tone brings to mind the late Cranberries vocalist, Dolores O’Riordan. Singing lightly on the slightly crunchy, 90s indie rock-esque ‘Growing Pains’, Akuah has the revelation that just because you’re technically an adult, that doesn’t mean you’re finished with the act of maturing: “Many years passed / Didn’t think it would last / But now I know and I stand fast / I’ll always grow.” “I am at ease / Within myself / The person I / Know too well,” she admits on ‘Addictive Personality’, a gentle confession of her desire to be alone.

The waterfront becomes a clever metaphor for emotions on the dreamy ‘By The Water’, where Akuah declares that with her “heart on [her] sleeve” and her “face is like an open book” she cries “all the time”, while on the acoustic ‘Dust’ she bemoans the titular particles getting into her eyes and blinding her and causing her mind to tell her “lies”. “Speak no more / You have said it all / Should’ve stayed home in your starless town,” she tells someone who thinks they know more than they do on ‘Starless Town’ against the song’s quietly enchanting traditional folk sound.

“Brightness in me / Within myself / Within me,” she reflects on the airy and dreamlike ‘Lost’, a song that rolls along in gentle waves, her vocals swaying to keep time. ‘Urchin Man’ finds Akuah telling the story of a fictional swamp creature, the very traditional Irish folk sound a perfect match for its lyrical tone of a tale passed down through generations sitting fireside: “His hair is wet / His coat is damp / Don’t know his name / But I’ll call him urchin man.”

In a world that’s increasingly obsessed with perfection, it’s refreshing to find an artist who understands the beauty of flaws and that to acknowledge them only makes a story richer. By making “Golden Seams”, Akuah has created a safe space for people who know the value of recognising their failures, and that’s a sentiment that’s worth its weight in gold.