Laufey – ‘A Matter of Time’ album review: More modern standards from a future great
Jazz and classical are two musical worlds that people get weird and defensive about.
Laufey has faced up to that from the start, as there is always some voice there and ready to claim that the 26-year-old, despite her lifelong training and education in the forms, cannot truly get it. But she does. On A Matter of Time, she really does as she presents more evidence as to why she’ll deservedly take up a place as a future master.
Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan; all the greats. They were a voice of their times and all danced on the same tightrope, balancing and playing between tradition and boundary pushing. That’s the space where jazz has always existed. It’s the lifeblood that fuels the form as anyone picking up that gauntlet has to understand and honour it.
Classical music is the same but also utterly different. While more rooted in regiment and strictness than jazz, it’s also another musical world that demands respect. Both demanded a foundational understanding; learn your instruments, play the standards and play them well, respect the pioneers and then, become one. Once you’ve proved you get it and know it, then you can start to mess with it.
On her previous two records, Laufey has done just that. Raised in a family of classical musicians and educated at Berkley, she has the foundation and proves that time and time again with truly stunning covers of the standards. But what she does best, and what’s made her a modern star, is her ability to move things into today.
Those same voices that raise against Laufey are the same tired, old, boring ones that claim jazz is dead in this modern age all which refusing to let it modernise. Meanwhile, as Laufey is writing songs like ‘Clockwork’ which sounds just like a timeless standard but beats from a relatable, gen-z heart, she’s keeping it alive and well and bringing a huge new crowd into the club.
Following her 2023 album, Bewitched, which won her a Grammy for ‘Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album’, A Matter of Time is both a step up in competence and risk. In moments, Laufey clearly finds the confidence to shake off even more of that tradition to do her own thing, like on the infectious fun of ‘Lover Girl’ or ‘Tough Luck’ and the folkish ‘Clean Air’, which go far beyond her origins, supported by Aaron Dessner’s genre-expanding role as a producer here. But on the flip side, there are also tracks here where she falls even deeper into the worlds that raised her, like on the staggering interlude ‘Cuckoo Ballet’, which is essentially a full-scale theatrical score in only three minutes and 40 seconds.
Laufey knows what she’s doing, and she does it exceptionally well. From the second she launched as an artist, there has been a clear motivation to her musi,c which is to honour and excite people about tradition, and use a modern eye to do that. Even over the most traditional of instrumentals, Laufey sings songs of her age, writing deeply relatable lyricism that can vary between silly, youthful social commentary into gut-wrenching emotion like on ‘Snow White’, her most searing track to date.
It’s what these worlds need. If you want young people to become interested in old forms and traditions, you need someone new and fresh to welcome in, to sing of their times and become the voice of it. Laufey is that and no doubt, as the times move on, she’ll graduate into the ranks of the other greats.
A standout track – ‘Snow White’: A spiritual sister to her track ‘Goddess’, Laufey’s best lyrics always come when she’s tearing into the deeply relatable feelings of insecurity, pushed onto women by society, and especially faced by non-white women facing up to white washed beauty standards.
On ‘Snow White’, Laufey grapples with feels of self-worth with visceral upset and even outright anger. It’s a song that gives you goosebumps as she pushes herself in search of catharsis in a feeling that seems too futile in the modern age.
For fans of: Scrolling on TikTok and being able to appreciate jazz – because, believe it or not, people can do both.
A concluding comment for the old man jazz community: Maybe a 26-year-old girl’s album, packed with Gen-Z lyricism about dating, friendship and self-esteem, isn’t for you. Maybe not everything is.
Release date: August 22nd, 2025 | Producer: Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner | Label: Vingolf Recordings and AWAL
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