Australia native Lenka Eden Kripac, better known for her stage name Lenka, brings in the end of the year with her sixth album Intraspectral. The indie pop artist has been in the music industry for over 15 years now, and her experience shows in her work.
Intraspectral is a word Lenka came up with on her own to describe the contents of the album. “Intra” means within and “spectral” is in reference to a spectrum. For her, and what she hopes her listeners can gather, is that this album represents the observation of one’s mental state and how deep one’s emotions can take them.
The emotional depth of this album is a journey for listeners to understand their magnitude of emotions and feelings. What portrays this the most is the instrumental use of synthesizers, releasing her creativity, and the sweet sounds of her voice.
Opening track “The Entire Spectrum” is the shortest song but lyrically is very crucial to the point of the album. The spectrum that is personified through Intraspectral is the most prominent in the lines “You won’t dull it, it wants to shine bright” and “You can’t hide it, it has to shine bright.” Lenka’s voice is quietly introduced by an accompanying piano repeating in the background.
The second track of the album is “Champion,” more of an upbeat signal to her pop discography. Josh Pyke, another Australian singer-songwriter, sang alongside Lenka. Touching on how someone can still be the hero to the protagonist, despite unnecessary things in between, when they are already admired. A steady bass line accompanied by a rhythmic guitar and pop beats sails the song through.
“Silhouette” is the pure bliss song of the album, having all the good vibes and beats. The sound and instrumentals mask the painful lyrics of “I knew I was losing it for real / Bursting at the seams / I knew I had to break the seal / I was living someone else’s dream”. Lenka is expressing her emotions of feeling like mystery to her mind and realizes she is nothing but a fragment of what she could be.
Unlike the other tracks, “One Moment” opens with young, child-like voices talking over each other until someone quiets them down. However, it sounds like at the end of the song the young voices are singing together in unison. That’s because Lenka sings “We’re still the same / They say we need each other / That we’re in all this together” and brings unity. The voices could represent something from her childhood or the importance of staying connected to one’s younger self, that lives inside of all of us.
A heavy bass line peeks through the pop rhythm and opens “Badly,” its lyricism clear in meaning. It’s about the desire to break the rules and act completely out of character, “Being good is overrated, so let’s behave badly / Just look at all that we created, being behaved badly” is the perfect lyric to describe the direction of the song. Sometimes you have to act out of your comfort zone or ‘badly’ to others to be with someone according to her lyrics.
“Ultraviolet” ends the tracklist of Intraspectral that sounds distinctively like any Taylor Swift song with the pop beats. The word ultraviolet means something destructive or with extreme force. But for Lenka, this appears to be something she craves for her life. She sings “Stuck in a holding pattern, not where I’m meant to be / I want the peaks and valleys, I’ll take the highs and lows / Show me the spectrum as a, more / Than the spectrum as a whole.” The ultraviolet is life itself, with all the happy moments beside the painful ones.
Writing about her experiences in life and getting to know her own emotions, Lenka curated them each into their own song on Intraspectral. Each song representing an emotion that she’s discovered in living with herself, and released these songs in possible hopes of inspiring her listeners to do the same.
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