London-based composer and singer-songwriter Sophia Hansen-Knarhoi makes a striking entrance with her debut album, Undertow. Across its tracks, voice and cello form a tightly intertwined core, carrying listeners through landscapes of grief, memory, and the raw edges of human connection. The album feels immediate, intimate, and unflinching, a collision of shadowed ambience and corporeal emotion.

Opening with a sense of tension and release, Undertow blends field recordings of storms and distant natural sounds with cello glissandos and layered vocals, creating a physical, almost tactile environment for the listener. Songs like “Crying in Pastel” and “My Mother and Me” confront anger and trauma head-on, while tracks such as “All the Things That Aren’t You” explore recognition and liberation from patterns of neglect. Throughout, Hansen-Knarhoi’s voice alternates between gritty urgency and fragile falsetto, often mirrored by the cello in ways that amplify both intensity and vulnerability.

Collaborations with producer Randall Dunn and instrumentalists Peter Zummo, Marilu Donovan, Henry Fraser, Luke Bergman, and Brent Arnold help carve a spacious, cinematic sound. The arrangements leave room for improvisation, capturing a sense of spontaneity and unfiltered emotional truth. The album’s minimalism is purposeful, letting each note, breath, and string resonate with clarity.

Rooted in Hansen-Knarhoi’s upbringing in the stark landscapes of Western Australia, Undertow carries an expansiveness that contrasts with its intimate lyricism. Field recordings and ambient textures evoke both the natural world and the internal terrain of memory, trauma, and growth. The result is a listening experience that feels alive, immediate, and deeply personal.

Undertow is an album of contrasts: rage and tenderness, fragility and force, reflection and catharsis. Hansen-Knarhoi’s cello and voice create a dialogue that is at once visceral and meditative, grounding abstract emotion in corporeal sound. It’s a debut that demands attention, rewarding those willing to immerse themselves in its complex, haunting depths.