REVIEW: The Setting Son – ‘Cul-De-Sac’

A full decade after vanishing into the Copenhagen night, The Setting Son resurface with a record that feels both comfortably familiar and startlingly present. ‘Cul-De-Sac’ reignites the group’s trademark sugar-coated fuzz, while folding in an undercurrent of grief and renewal that could only come from the long silence that preceded it.

Frontman Sebastian T.W. Kristiansen, once the apartment-bound loner recording 4-track demos for Bad Afro Records, now sounds like a survivor taking stock. The album opens with the title-track, a tumbling, organ-driven lament that immediately spotlights his evolution as a writer. Christian Ki’s mix keeps everything lean, but there’s air for those organ flourishes that have always given The Setting Son their time-warped glow.

‘I Still Can’t Decide What I Want’ swings with jangly abandon, balancing Mod swagger and existential foot-tapping, while ‘Going South’ brings Danish indie stalwart Emma Acs into the fold, her spectral co-lead turning the track into a half-lit duet that feels like Lee & Nancy lost in a haze of reverb. It’s the sort of collaboration that reminds you just how porous the Copenhagen scene can be, artists popping in and out of each other’s cosmic soup.

Yet the emotional centrepiece and closer is ‘Sleep (Dedicated to Heinzz)’, a slow-burn tribute to the group’s late organist Henrik Malm. Swells of tape-warmed keys and gently phased guitars hover like a wake held in some 60s basement club. It’s wistful without sinking into sentimentality, a balancing act The Setting Son have always been surprisingly good at.

For longtime followers, ‘Cul-De-Sac’ is less a reinvention than a polishing of the mirror: the hooks are still immediate, the choruses still dip into minor-key bittersweetness, but there’s a gravity to the lyrics that wasn’t there in ’07. Where earlier albums sometimes flirted with teenage nihilism, this record grapples with actual loss; friends gone, cities changed, time passed. It’s garage psychedelia for adults who’ve buried a few dreams and still found a reason to dance.

Does the band break significant new ground? Not exactly. But that’s beside the point. ‘Cul-De-Sac’ feels like a love letter to the engine that kept them going all these years: simple chords, cheap amps, and melodies you can whistle. The Setting Son didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel, they just made sure it still spins, even on the dead-end streets of memory. And that’s its own quiet triumph.