A Matter of Time
Laufey
Vingolf Recordings / AWAL
22 August 2025
One might be excused for thinking Laufey has become disillusioned with the glamorous life. The 14 tracks on her latest album, A Matter of Time, suggest that neither love nor money, fame nor beauty, are what they seem. The singer’s persona accepts these facts of life, but she finds a silver lining in her cloudy existence.
Laufey is no misanthrope. She may see through the hollowness of “Castle in Hollywood”-like dreams, yet she finds the positives in our quotidian reality. The disconnect between the loveliness of the Icelandic singer’s voice and the details of mundane authenticity suggests that maybe it’s not all bad, as she kicks former lovers to the curb on songs like “Tough Luck” and “Mr. Eclectic”. Heartbreak is not as devastating the second and third time around. “Forget-Me-Not”, she instructs her lover. She has her memories to keep her company.
Laufey knows what goes around, comes around like a “Carousel” and that we are all acrobats. The orchestral backdrops that decorate her songs soften the blows of emotional damage. Bad habits and wine also play a role. “When you go to hell, I’ll go there with you,” she notes with a sultry sneer. Sure, sometimes it is hard to be a woman; “What a curse it is to be a lover girl.” However, sometimes there is pleasure in the pain, or more precisely, there is no pleasure without pain.
Laufey often adds a lilting throb in her voice that keeps her tales from being too saccharine. She confesses her sins of being too open and giving in “A Cautionary Tale” while simultaneously seeming guarded. She admits to having a “chameleon heart” that may appear to be one thing on the surface while masking her deeper feelings.
That works as a metaphor for the way she vocalizes. She has a sweet, seductive voice. The songs take on a particular narrative covering that poses as the authentic voice of the artist. Laufey establishes a mood and a persona from track to track as if she’s reading from her diary. Yet one senses there is more going on that is left unsung. Like a garter belt on the leg of a woman without stockings or padded shoulders on a skinny guy, the illusion is more important than the truth.
A Matter of Time has many charms. Like a pretty girl who denies her attractiveness, Laufey may try too hard to convince one of what’s not true. Her loveliness shines through her disavowals.
That marks a change from the more romantic singer who released two gushy records that sounded like they came out during a previous era when good girls were the rage. She’s the older but wiser woman now who is not afraid to show her flaws as a way of highlighting her attractiveness. As the album title declares, time matters. She was 23 and 24 when she released her first albums. She’s 26 now.
That may not seem much different to an outsider, but let me ask a personal question. Do you remember how different you were at those ages? For many of us, there were profound differences between who we were in our early 20s compared with our mid-20s. For a musical artist who was an unknown performer who became a Grammy Award-winning celebrity, the transformations must have been even more radical.
Perhaps that’s the reason she opens A Matter of Time with the song “Clockwork”. It’s a jazzy little number about a first date and the facades we put on. “Nothing brings me fear like meeting with my destiny,” she sings. The two fall in love, or so it seems. Laufey knows this may or may not be true. Only time will tell. Chances are, this album will long be remembered.