Hollie Kenniff has a particular gift for making music that feels gentle and weightless, while still carrying a slightly sadder feeling underneath. Not quite sorrow or anything heavy-handed in a dramatic sense, but that bittersweetness she captures so well. Her new album, For Those Who Stay, does exactly that. Across these eleven pieces, Kenniff brings together airy ambient passages, soft guitar, distant vocal textures, and subtle piano in a way that carries emotion without ever overplaying it. Part of the record’s beauty comes from accumulation, from the way each piece adds another layer of feeling until the album gradually forms one continuous emotional space.
That comes through especially clearly in the album’s opening stretch. “Love, Lightness (Light Version)” is brief, but it immediately draws you into the record’s world with that familiar dreamy lightness. “Dayrise” and “Hidden Current” keep the same sense of calm, but with a slightly more fragile edge and a faint ache underneath. They unfold so patiently that by the time you realize how fully they’ve drawn you in, you’re already somewhere else mentally.
Later, “Come What May” and “At Every Moment and in Every Place” bring in gentle guitar traces and hushed, hazy vocal textures, giving the record a slightly fuller emotional contour. A very subtle piano thread runs through “The World Can Wait,” “Of Quiet Beauty,” and “Around the Lake, as Time Slows,” adding another delicate detail to the album’s haze.
I should mention that I already have a real soft spot for the wider Kenniff world, from Helios to Harbors to Hollie’s solo work, so I’m not exactly coming to this from a distance. But one reason I keep returning to her in particular is that she has a rare way of conveying feeling without ever pushing too hard. Her music doesn’t grab you in a dramatic sense; it settles around you almost instantly. For Those Who Stay works in much the same way.
For those already close to her music, this will probably feel like a return to something familiar in the best sense. And for anyone coming to her solo work for the first time, it is also a lovely place to begin. Intimate and transporting, For Those Who Stay glows softly rather than brightly, and feels all the more affecting because of it.
Check out the album here:
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Find similar music in our Dreamy, Warm Drone-Ambient and Ambient & Neoclassical playlists.
We discovered this release via SubmitHub.
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