"Up With The Sun is ronja’s latest cycle of songs: themes first met in wistful dreams, sounding dreamlike all the while, with voice and acoustic guitar as the main vehicle, and a company of Berlin and Copenhagen musicians close behind. Following For Annette (2023), it is the second ronja record on Berlin’s Unguarded, this time to appear as a co-release between Unguarded and Lucerne-based Präsens Editionen. In a kindred spirit to its predecessor, the writing here is less concerned with naming absence than with tracing its manners in everyday mundanity: morning ablutions, shared chambers made into thoroughfares, misplaced keys, and pages turned and returned are the plain theatre of longing, alienation, self-consciousness, and indecision, and at the same time their chosen emblems.
The opening “Walkthrough Room” is a song of close air and many reflections. With the acoustic guitar moving swiftly yet with a tender hand, the flutes answer one another like voices in a long gallery. A manner of echo repeats each sound, as though this room were lined with mirrors. It is quick, yet hushed, and it speaks of nearness, albeit one lived in passage. “Swim in You,” keeps a winding harmony in the guitar part whilst the vocal holds its plain course. Airy, wavering flutes drift in light shadings, lifting the song beyond the common form of the lone singer. Levity is not ornament here, but physic, like a jester called in to spare the spirit from its own severity, and the line “Say something funny. We’re all having a good time here” lands with that exact edge. In “Slept So Deeply,” a repeating figure on the guitar bears the song aloft. In the refrain, deep tones strike the chest; the pedal steel guitar rises in broad waves; ringing harmonics catch like light on wire. Lyrically it speaks with a severity that is almost merciful: “Lately I’ve been happy that you left me.” It is a song of endings.
In the title track, the voice is veiled, as if heard through an old receiver, with textures that shimmer and withdraw. The Interlude turns inward, with no words spoken. A guitar drawn from tape, bent in pitch. Many layers circle one another, like repeating a memory over and over. Roomer, Berlin’s dream rock darlings, see their hymn “Chance” return here with a second life. It first appeared on their debut record, Leaving It All to Chance, on which ronja serves as singer, guitarist, and principal writer. In this version, the voice is altered in hue, still recognisably her own, though shifted enough to unsettle the ear. This cross-pollination is but one proof that these songs may wear many garments: whether adorned with full band and production detail, or pared down to voice and guitar alone, the core of ronja’s songwriting remains classic and hard to date, and thus timeless." – Luka Aron
