7/10

Kim Vestin’s 'Phoenix' feels like the moment an artist steps out from behind the curtain with the slow, glowing confidence of someone reborn into their own voice. After years of interruption, upheaval, and life pulling her in every direction except toward the studio, Vestin returns with an album that sounds both deeply lived-in and startlingly new. 'Phoenix' is a portrait of transformation painted in widescreen hues, shimmering with longing, fragility, and a hard-won sense of self.

The record draws from a kaleidoscope of influences without ever sounding derivative. Vestin and co-producer Love Sivik weave together indie-pop melancholy, jazz-tinged harmonies, atmospheric electronics, and the earthiness of folk in a way that feels fluid, instinctive, and unmistakably hers. One moment the arrangements swell with cinematic drama; the next they shrink into an intimate whisper, as if we’re eavesdropping on her private midnight confessions.

What anchors the whole project is her voice. There’s an almost spectral quality to her delivery; clear enough to cut through the densest arrangement, yet soft enough to carry entire emotional universes in the space between breaths. She sings as someone who’s known ache and carried it quietly, transforming it into something luminous. On songs like 'Another night' and 'Who’s gonna come for me', she channels uncertainty and longing with disarming honesty. While 'Just in time' widens the palette, balancing sorrow with a flicker of hope.

But the album’s beating heart is the closer 'Save your goodbyes', a track that keeps the raw, unpolished demo vocal that shows she's not striving for perfection, but for truth. And her truth lands with devastating clarity.

'Phoenix' is the sound of an artist rebuilding herself in real time, crafting beauty through the mess rather than waiting for a tidy moment. The late-night labour, the years of pause, the longing for a life that feels bigger, all of it reverberates through the album. And what emerges is a stunning statement of artistic rebirth.