Album Review: SoftSun, Eternal Sunrise
Posted in Reviews on November 11th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Eternal Sunrise is the second full-length from SoftSun, following behind Nov. 2024’s Daylight in the Dark (review here), as well as their first release through Heavy Psych Sounds. Like that album, the six-song/40-minute Eternal Sunrise features drums by the recording engineer — in this case that’s Robert Garson at Red Barn Recorders, who also mixed — and furthers the collaboration between bassist/vocalist Pia Isaksen (of Oslo’s Superlynx and her own Pia Isa solo work) and guitarist Gary Arce (Yawning Man, Big Scenic Nowhere, Zun, etc.), whose tonal blend and the mellow-complement of Isaksen‘s voice create a feel that’s both textural and organic, able to be open-spaced as in the finale “Cremation Sunlight” or to find a heavy-post-rock wash in the midsection of “Anywhere But Here.”
Those who heard the first record will find the sophomore outing operating in a similar vein. By and large, the mood is serene and exploratory, as a piece like the opening roller “Sacred Heart” (not a Dio cover) unfolds with strident punctuation in the drums and despite that a fervent sense of Eternal Sunrise as a place to dwell. This was true of Daylight in the Dark as well — one will note the on-theme title of the follow-up; songs like “Sleep the Day Away” and “Cremation Sunlight” seem to be working to capture a place and time too, and fair enough — as not only is place declared in big bright letters that say ‘desert’ to the indoctrinated heads who will no doubt make up the majority of the album’s listenership, but there’s a spirit and declaration of self-in-place as well. That is to say, as much as Eternal Sunrise feels primarily geared toward giving their audience space for itself in the material — which they do, amply and ably — but finding space for themselves in the songs too. There is no undercutting the value of a place to be in this day and age, finding a deeper resonance with the moment you’re living through. That seems to be happening in these songs for this version of this project.
It happens through a combination of elements, and the core of SoftSun remains how well Isaksen and Arce pair musically. Isaksen‘s bass feels richer and more present in tone on Eternal Sunrise in pieces like “Sleep the Day Away” and in the second half of side A’s slow-churning second cut “A Hundred and Sixteen,” with a slow and molten fluidity that — in complement to Garson‘s drumming, which for sure is the grounding element throughout — gives Arce‘s signature guitar tone a corresponding lower-frequency to float over. Vocals are languid in their delivery, breathy and melodic; shoegazey, for want of a better word. But as Isaksen has showed time and again, she’s able to bring emotion to a heavier movement, and the penultimate “Abandoned Lands” shows this as Isaksen (in layers), Arce and Garson follow a subtle structure while continuing their focus on immersion. A verse changing to a chorus might just happen with an emphasized syllable, and the solo might just be a howl in the night. Where you go with it is up to you.
“Anywhere But Here” closes aide A and is the shortest inclusion at 4:53. More linear than verse/chorus in feel, it feels more exploratory than some of the jam-born-but-worked-on material that surrounds, but was likely included on the record because how much it encapsulates and says about where this band is at this point. With Garson steadily keeping things moving beneath, Isaksen and Arce set forth a tonal shimmer and fill it out with verses that are somewhat obscure in the lyrics but clear in the melody just the same. If it’s escapism, as the title hints, it seems to have a clearer idea of where it wants to be than the title might lead one to believe. In closing the album, “Cremation Sunlight” (also the longest track at 8:28) enacts a few bursts of guitar noise that hint toward synthier or more psychedelic improving or just more weirdness to come, none of which is reason to complain as Arce‘s solo rises before the comedown to finish out.
Like a lot of Eternal Sunrise, it’s pretty simple math in terms of each of these players — and I’m not discounting Garson‘s contributions here, either behind the kit or the mixing board — particularly Arce and Isaksen bringing recognizable personality aspects to the band and SoftSun deriving its own persona from the combination. There are balance shifts throughout in tempo, in who’s written what part, in how the vocals might flow alongside a guitar that’s mostly worked instrumental for the last 40 years, and those serve to make Eternal Sunrise that much broader, and at no point do SoftSun step away from the atmosphere they’re creating as they go. If anything, at the moment where they otherwise might have, “Sleep the Day Away” doubles down on the entrancing scope with its reaching-into-the-ether solo. By the time it’s done, your head’s deeper into it than you realized.
That SoftSun turned around Eternal Sunrise in a year’s time speaks to the band’s having some measure of priority in relation to other ongoing projects, whether that’s Arce in Yawning Man — who also have a new record out this week, called Pavement Ends (review here) — or Isaksen in her solo work, and an urgency that might seem counterintuitive to the quiet nature of the songs if you’ve never been in love before. As it stands, I won’t predict what’s to come for SoftSun, but I’m glad to have Eternal Sunrise as an answer to Daylight in the Dark, and it feels like if they keep the band going on the path they’re on now, an organic progression in songwriting is taking hold as the Arce/Isaksen collab becomes more familiar and each has a better sense of what to expect from the other. They succeed in giving Eternal Sunrise the breadth that feels so intentionally made for the listener to lose themselves in, and show that there’s still more ground in the infinite unknown to cover.
SoftSun, Eternal Sunrise (2025)
Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp
