Ulver are a strange band and Neverland is another strange question mark under their belt. Starting out with its left field album cover, Neveland marks another shift in the band’s direction, one I’ve been waiting for and saw coming on previous album Liminal Animals. But where that album only started another breakdown of the Ulver sound, this time we are in full deconstruction mode, floating in a vast space of possibility or an abyss of it, depending on who you ask. Wagering a guess, the off-the-cuff discovery writing that defined Liminal Animals is surely making a return here, since this new album arrives just shy over a year later. I’m always excited over a new Ulver release but as expected, this means that the music doesn’t feel as thought through and interconnected as I expect from these guys. It’s easy to understand why this is the case as with “Fear in a Handful of Dust”, the album seemingly starts off on a note of grief over deceased band member Tore Ylvisaker, who joined the band for their first seismic shift in direction all the way back on 1998’s Themes from William Blake’s The Marrige of Heaven and Hell. Quoting the first section of T.S. Elliot‘s poem The Waste Land (called “The Burial of the Dead”), the album dwells on this notion of involuntary change, which quickly arrives with a sharp mood shift into the electronica/trip hop of “Elephant Trunk”. Ulver are here, as always, masters of creating textured sounds that interest with their flawless execution. The style sits around the same place as 2020’s Flowers of Evil but with more of their ambient minded writing leading the way into the postcard blues.
Neverland traverses some ground – ranging from upbeat grooves to somber drones – but the music is always shifting from one point to the next. This creates a sense that this album often consists more of moods than proper songs, even when they are structured as such. At the same time, the more upbeat tracks make the complete absence of Kristoffer Rygg‘s vocals felt, like a phantom limb that should be there to help direct the flow of songs. This is possibly an issue that affects me more than others, but I find it hard to latch on to most of the songs on this album because of this. I don’t have this problem with earlier Ulver albums like Messe I.X-VI.X, however, which makes me suspect that there is an issue with the writing on Neverland. Much of what Ulver are doing here are things we’ve heard them do before, and with little of the connective tissue it usually has and needs. This is fine if you are a listener that likes to let this kind of album wash over you. Personally, it makes me feel like Neverland is a haunted house-ride of electronica sounds, that is not terribly haunting. Perhaps that part of the album is going over my head, with this album being made by musicians who recently lost one of their friends and deciding to go back to the music as a possible relief or comfort, making its meaning haunting in of itself. Unfortunately, I can only feel that at its bookends, and my heart checks out in between. Neverland is making me feel like I was too harsh on Liminal Animals, as revisiting that I’m realizing that it’s a more focused experience than I perceived at the time. Will I feel the same when this album has a year on its neck? It’s impossible to tell, but while I’m glad Ulver are creating and experimenting again, this Neverland is one I have less interest in revisiting.
