Lindsey Stirling's Artemis

Available Now Everywhere

Like a lot of people, I was equally surprised and delighted to hear the news that Lindsey Stirling was putting out a new album. As I mentioned in a post from last year, I've been a fan of hers since I first saw her video for her original song Spontaneous Me several years back. Since then, I've bought every one of her albums and, whenever she releases a new music video via YouTube, I get excited. (She's probably my favorite contemporary musician.)

When I listened to the first few tracks she released for Artemis, the new album in question, though I got extra excited. Why? Because most of them were Lindsey playing solo. (For example, check out the music video for the titular track below. Those familiar with Greek Mythology will get all the Artemis nods.)

I'm not the only person in the world who loves what Lindsey does. Her second album, Shatter Me, didn't stay fixed on the Amazon music charts for nothing. Her combination of the classical skill (the violin after all is a classical instrument), fused together with EDM and Dubstep makes her sound unique. As much as I loved her third studio album, Brave Enough, however, like some, I was also slightly disappointed by it.

But not because the music was bad.

I regularly relisten to all many of the tracks (Something Wild, and Hold My Heart being just two of them). My disappointment with Brave Enough simply came from the fact that there was so few solo violin tracks on the album. Out of the fourteen tracks, only six of them (less that half), featured Lindsey on her own, without a collaborator. Many of the tracks, like The Arena and Prism, stand out as some of the best because Lindsey was on her own.

Whenever a you put a musician and a singer together on stage though--or on the same track--no matter how good the musician is, the singer is always centerstage. When you put the abstract (pure sound), next to something somewhat concrete (lyrics), all the listeners attention is drawn to the words of the singer. No matter how great the tracks are, Lindsey seemed to be playing second fiddle (no pun intended), to the vocalist(s).

That's where Artemis is different.

Out of this album's thirteen original tracks, only two of them (one of which appears on the album in a "lyricless" form), eleven of the tracks are just Lindsey and her violin shredding it like the great musician she is. There are a few tracks, like Foreverglow, where Lindsey actually accompanies herself with either vocalizations or lyrics (something she's done in the past, such as on her Christmas Album, Warmer in the Winter, and Stars Align from her debut album), and even though she isn't a "singer" per say, she's actually quite good.

Like much of Lindsey's music, the combination of her violin playing and the EDM beats and background underlying it, there is almost an epic feel to the Artemis track list. To a new listener, it might almost sound like the score of a film, each one leading onto the next part of a larger story.

Concurrently, each of the tracks almost seems to be telling us a story in and of itself. (This isn't anything new of course to Lindsey. She's said several times that some of her songs--such as Shatter Me being about her struggle with anorexia--have a personal narrative underlying them.)

The album has only been out now for three days, but I'm sure by the end of the month, it will be an undoubtable bestseller. Lindsey Stirling is back at centerstage where she belongs.