Welcome to the Garden is a gorgeous meeting of jazz, pop, and rock music that came seemingly out of nowhere (March) to sweep me off my feet. I guarantee that you’ll be shaking within the ten minutes it takes for the title track to introduce you to the album. It presents love as an all-encompassing primordial force whose harbingers are these layered, echoing vocals and creeping guitars. It should be jarring then that the remainder of Welcome to the Garden drops that menace in favor of bringing love back to the earth of here and now but it isn’t. Emily Steinwall may leave the horror on the opener, but she never loses the awe once she gets personal. The project morphs over its 40> minute runtime from a cosmic power to a lone lover whispering words of comfort and it is absolutely breathtaking to witness. The passion in Steinwall’s voice soars instead of rumbling, while the dance that the piano, synthesizers, and strings do becomes almost joyful as they all gradually come closer together and start working in unison. Welcome to the Garden starts imposing, but it grows more tender with each song, shedding the barriers and abstractions to wind up as accommodating as it needs to be. With her debut, Steinwall has created a bonafide odyssey, one that I will take part in wholeheartedly as many times as I am asked. From: https://www.albumoftheyear.org/user/electricmess/album/427343-welcome-to-the-garden/
