The experience of listening to music isn’t exactly the same as reading a novel, yet with the right material, both can elicit a similar spiritual upheaval. Often, to reach that soul-stirring feeling, passages need to be reread and songs listened to on repeat, their true essence only revealing itself the deeper you fall into the pages or the sounds. Dive into Cam’s third album, ‘All Things Light’, and you’ll find a similar experience waiting.
Since her 2015 major label debut ‘Untamed’, the singer-songwriter has slowly shifted away from the traditional country sound. On 2020’s ‘The Otherside’, she dabbled in electronic and pop, expanding her tapestry by working with artists and producers like Avicii, Sam Smith and Tyler Johnson. This swirl of past and present come together on enigmatic opener ‘Turns Out That I Am God’, which starts out similar to the sad, haunting acoustic sound of her breakout single ‘Burning House’. As she starts contemplating the nature of the divine (“I found a paradise here in my mind / I go there every night / Turns out that I am God”), the song slowly transforms into something more ethereal and otherworldly with the introduction of shimmering synths and vocal layering.
This slow-burn of drama and emotion, with an existential questioning of our place in the world, extends itself throughout ‘All Things Light’, coloured in different shades of folk, country and pop. It’s not unlike the songs Cam helped pen for Beyoncé’s 2024 ‘Cowboy Carter’ album – including its powerful opener ‘Ameriican Requiem’ and stunning ballad ‘Protector’ – having been drawn “from the same wellspring”, many of those sounds and underlying themes carry over to her own body of work as well.
Some songs on ‘All Things Light’ are easier to digest, like the soothing, old-timey ‘Slow Down’ that ponders the worth of hard work in an unfair system (“Honey, slow down / You’re an Energizer Bunny / Helpin’ those that make their money / Running you into the ground”). There’s also the funky yet menacing ‘Kill The Guru!’, a cautionary tale about going too far on a search for answers (“They will try to warn you / Keep you in the dark / Don’t you wanna see what you’ve been missing?”), and upbeat ‘Alchemy’’s simple musing on the cycle of life (“Dust to flesh to bones to dust / We are golden / Call it a miracle, I call it alchemy”).
Other listens are more impenetrable, asking for patience, focus and those repeat listens to reveal its true meaning. ‘Canyon’, which sounds as if it could soundtrack a modern Western movie, shrouds its vaguely religious theme and meaning behind Americana imagery (“Held onto an emptiness / Like midnight holding stars / Wrestled free from sleeplessness / Prayer I know by heart). ‘Hallelujah’, meanwhile, takes its cues from Leonard Cohen’s faith-affirming classic of the same name and flips them on their head: “Sang till my heart was sore / I always knеw the chords / Still believe, but now I’m not so sure / Why it don’t sound like hallelujah anymore.”
There isn’t an answer to many of the philosophical questions and musings posed on ‘All Things Light’ – and that feels like the point of the record. Cam, who calls herself a “very face-the-abyss type of person”, has transformed her own introspection into a mirror for the audience, her songwriting a force that compels the listener to slow down and contemplate on what they’re listening to and, in turn, on themselves.
