7/10

There’s a certain kind of record that prefers to drift through its influences rather than explore them head on. And Meret Ester’s debut album 'Taken by Surprise' is exactly that: a gentle unraveling of feeling, time, and memory that washes over you.

The album opens with 'Falling', a brief yet compelling introduction. Its sparse textures and subtle instrumentation invite us into a hazy inner world that sets the tone for the offering ahead. Featuring tales of a melancholic magician, a shy postman, and an indecisive astronaut, each figure is a stand-in for the complexities of feeling adrift and reaching for connection. They speak in metaphor, gently guiding you through the album’s emotional terrain.

Recorded in part at Berlin’s historic Funkhaus and shaped further at home with her brother Marvin Ester, the album lives in the space between the personal and the universal. There’s something inherently nostalgic about it, in the way it seems to access some buried emotional memory we’ve all carried around since childhood.

But what makes 'Taken by Surprise' so compelling is its refusal to rush. It’s quiet by design, where each track acts like a short story from a dream you almost remember. The folk undercurrent anchors it, but there’s an undeniable spectral quality to the record; a sense that it’s slightly out of phase with our world, humming from somewhere just adjacent.

Fans of artists like Sibylle Baier, early Laura Marling, or Julie Byrne will find a familiar warmth here. But Meret Ester is tracing her own contours, following the thread of feeling wherever it leads. 'Taken by Surprise' asks you to feel something tender, and maybe remember what it’s like to be quietly undone.