Charlotta Perers is a Malmö, Sweden-based artist and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed and rising indie electro pop project Big Fox. Perers’ first two Big Fox albums — 2011’s self-titled debut and 2013’s Now — received widespread with material amassing over two million Spotify streams, as well as sync placements on Charmed, You Are The Worst and Catfish.
Initially slated for a May 2018 release, Perers’ Tom Malmros-produced third album See How the Light Falls was shelved a few weeks before its release when the rising Swedish artist received some news that at time derailed the album — and for some time, her career. “A few weeks before the albums was supposed to be released, I was diagnosed with lymphoma,” Perers recalls in press notes. “It all happened very quickly and it was almost like entering a parallel world with a different time scale, rules and priorities. It felt almost like being forced on to one of those ghost trains in a theme park, going in and out of tunnels and not knowing when or how or even if i would be able to get off.”
The entire process allowed a much deeper sense of perspective for the Malmo-based artist. “Life suddenly became very intense, very here and now — but that amplified positive experiences too. I realized how deeply our happiness is connected to our expectations,” Perers explains. “If I didn’t expect or demand things of life I could actually be quite happy just playing Yahtzee all day. But it felt good to know that the album was waiting for me on the other side. It was a reminder of something else, the someone I was outside the hospital.”
18 months after her cancer diagnosis, Perers has fully recovered and has been “slowly reclaiming my life back,” as she says. Naturally, the added gestation period for the album has given the album’s material a deeper personal meaning and significance. “When I listen to it now I actually like the album even more,” she says. “I have some distance from it. When you’re in the middle of the process, it’s easy to get caught up in the details and not really hear the song anymore. Recently when I started listening to the album, after not listening to it for months, I even got this strange feeling of . . .have we really made this?”
Sonically, the album’s material which weaves and bobs between dream pop ambience and mood and skillfully crafted songs further establishes the sound that won the Swedish artist acclaim: achingly tender and hauntingly beautiful songs centered around her expressive and airy voice and a textured production that’s both delicate and immersive. Interestingly, when Perers first started to work on the material that would comprise See How the Light Falls, she intuitively knew that the process couldn’t — and shouldn’t — be rushed. She had to allow the work to unravel at a natural pace while finding a natural connection. “My experience of creativity is that I get this vague feeling of being pointed in a certain direction,” the acclaimed Malmo-based artist explains. “It rarely explains itself more than that. But I’ve learnt that if I give it time and attention then things slowly start to move and grow into something. It seems to run more smoothly if I manage to step back and let the process lead me instead of forcing it in a specific direction. Like with the lyrics, I can search for the right lyrics for a long time, even give up, and then some months later it’s as if the missing words find me rather than the other way around.”
As a result, the album’s material feels and sounds thoughtful and spacious — with the material arguably being some for the most atmospheric she has written and released to date while much of the album’s songs evoking specific times and places for its creator. “Sometimes songs are like secret rooms where you can say things that you don’t say anywhere else,” Charlotta Perers shares. “Final Call,” which was released as a single when See How the Light Falls was initially supposed to be released now takes Perers to a specific moment: “When I listen to it now I remember my room at the hospital, the leaves moving outside the window, the nurses coming in and out and that special sound of the door which gave a little squeak every time someone opened it,” she recalls.
See How The Light Falls‘ latest single, the slow-burning “Let Love In” is an atmospheric track centered around hazy synths, shimmering and gently plucked strings, gently padded beats, Perers’ gorgeous and achingly tender vocals and a soaring hook. The result is a song that’s features intimate and introspective lyrics with a hauntingly beautiful cinematic quality. And while bringing Kate Bush and JOVM mainstay ACES to mind, the track evokes the feeling of desperately longing to be more open with others and taking new steps to change that.
