by Hayden Merrick (@HaydenMerrick96)
Annelotte de Graaf, AKA Amber Arcades, isn’t your prototypical pop star. The Dutch songwriter is passionate about organic farming, runs an Instagram account devoted to cooking, and spent several years putting her law degrees(!) to work at the international war crimes tribunal. “As we say in Dutch, if you change what you eat, it’s good for your appetite […] and I think it’s like that with music for me as well,” she recently told Under the Radar. These diverse, competing inspirations undoubtedly feed her creative process, engendering music that is multidimensional, authentic, and always unique from its predecessor.
Graaf’s second full-length, 2018’s European Heartbreak, was a bright, Americana-indebted repository of political disillusionment and personal heartbreak, with sprightly horns and Courtney Barnettian strums vying to offset her woes. The new Amber Arcades album, Barefoot on Diamond Road, retires those folky elements and runs with a denser, darker, and more cinematic color palette—akin to the expansive, orchestrated pop of Frankie Rose and Melody’s Echo Chamber.
During Diamond Road’s writing, Graaf entered into a new relationship and decamped from her cozy hometown, Utrecht, to The Netherlands’ bustling capital. Accordingly, the sonics and lyrics vacillate between giddy excitement and apprehension; from propulsive cello chugs and a desire to “feel the fault lines moving” (“Odd to Even”) all the way to the spacious “Life is Coming Home,” a wistful wave to a hometown she no longer recognizes. “Home, this place is all I’ve ever known/ I turned around and it had changed,” Graaf waxes and wanes; her voice is manipulated by an electronic filter, Laurie Anderson-style, and the occasional gust of noise passes behind her like a metallic tumbleweed, the symbol of a ghost town.
Moving forward while wishing to preserve the past is a conflict that surrounds the album’s logistical creation, too, with Graaf leaving long-time label Heavenly to join Fire Records but also reenlisting her old collaborator, the New York-based producer Ben Greenberg, with whom she worked on her self-funded debut album. His production coats the arrangements in a clean sheen, ensuring that breakbeat samples, pulsating synths, and stirring string orchestrations are beautifully balanced and melded into a cohesive whole.
It’s Graaf’s songwriting fundamentals that retain our attention—so eloquent and compelling that you’d be forgiven for thinking music is her primary hustle. Then again, is it for any artist anymore? While the statistics and the tour cancellations are concerning at best, Graaf leaves us with a hopeful thesis on the resonant closing track: “Sun is coming up, what can we do but try/ Go around the corner, care about what you find.” Take off your shoes, and chase the good.