Today marks the release of Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow, the new album from Sharron Kraus which we’re celebrating with the premiere of her music video for the title track. In his review of the album (which you can read here), Thomas Blake concluded:
There are many factors that make Joy’s Reflection Is Sorrow a wonderful album. The musicianship is great (the woodwind and violin of Jenny Bliss Bennett is a particular treat), Kraus’s voice has found a new confidence and the rolled-back arrangements and production allow the songs room to breathe and speak. But perhaps the most important thing, in a world in which instant gratification and long-term despair are increasingly held up as the only options, is the sense of a lasting optimism that goes beyond the span of a human life, that perhaps even defines the nature of human life. Kraus may not be able to answer those big questions – maybe they are unanswerable – but she has found the best possible way to ask them.
Sharron shared the following about the making of the album:
“2016 was a year in which the reaper seemed to be lurking around every corner. Bowie’s death in January stunned me, but the way he’d made art out of and up to his death seemed a wonderful way of embracing the inevitable, making something meaningful out of it. In March, Huxley, our beautiful cat, barely out of kittenhood, was run over and the loss of a creature so full of life and energy, yet to experience the full cycle of seasons, broke my heart. By the time my father died in July, I was on the warpath and determined that death wouldn’t have the last say (futile though this determination may be). The collection of songs that became Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow are responses to these losses, and to the darkness that seemed to be closing in around us. This, the title song, is about the idea that the more we love, the more we suffer at the loss of those we love. I found this idea to be consoling in the midst of pain: knowing the pain is a necessary consequence of love and that only the loveless are immune to it makes it more bearable. And the seasons turn and we find joy again.”
Released 21 June 2018 on Vinyl via Sunstone Records and on CD via Nightshade
CD and Digital via Bandcamp: https://sharronkraus.bandcamp.com/album/joys-reflection-is-sorrow