Einar Solberg - "16"
The debut solo album of Leprous' contentious frontman
Einar Solberg is best known as the vocalist, keyboardist, and frontman for Leprous, one of the hottest bands in the Prog Metal scene for the last few years. Solberg is a founding member of Leprous, which formed in 2001 when he was 16. He has recorded seven albums with Leprous;1 this is his first solo album.
Leprous has many vocal supporters and detractors, and both sides of the argument hinge on Solberg’s unique vocal style. Leprous’ fans are quick to point out the band’s other strengths, as well, but Solberg’s vocals are still the band’s most unique stylistic quality; still, others decry it as merely (and frequently) flipping everything into falsetto.
Neither side is wrong, and opinions on Solberg’s vocals largely come down to preference.
His solo album, naturally, leans even further into this style of singing. There is a lot of falsetto on the album. Some people are put off by falsetto vocals (again, preference). However, the way that Solberg flips into that higher range feels incredibly effortless and natural — in a way that would make several tenors I knew in high school envious. His voice is like warm syrup — light but thick; sweet and rich; flowy but thick — when he isn’t in falsetto. And when he flips, it’s like he’s leapt into the stratosphere just to show that he could.
He’s an incredible talent with a stylistic signature all his own. And that’s difficult to find nowadays.
Of course, this album also sees him without the support of the incredible band he’s accustomed to performing with. Oddly enough, Leprous’ typical approach to composition sees the guitarist penning the lyrics and the vocalist composing the core melodies, which is inverted from the “standard” idea of which members lead which songwriting elements.2 Since Solberg does a lot of the composition for the band, his solo material echoes Leprous strongly; but without the ultimate creative cooperation of his usual bandmates, the songs found on 16 are lacking in the complexity and ambition usually found on the last several Leprous albums.
There are, of course, other musicians who have stepped in to help him out, including Raphael Weinroth-Browne, who is a regular touring musician with the band. Other supporting musicians come from Gåte, Agent Fresco, and Bent Knee, among others.
But these supports don’t go quite as far as a dedicated band would, so ultimately, the album comes out sounding very much like a Leprous Lite copycat sort of thing; it sounds like this other amazing band, but the instrumentation is (generally) more basic and the lyrics are worse.
And by ‘worse’, I mostly mean just ‘much more repetitive’. They’re still descriptive and poetic and weirdly obscure, so Solberg has certainly picked up a few stylistic tendencies from the lyrics he’s been singing all these years. But several songs feel very repetitive, including opener and title track “16” (which is still gorgeous, in spite of it).
I also have to caveat my statement on the instrumentation a bit by underscoring that this observation is relative. I mean, “Home” has brass and strings and quite a bit of depth, overall. There are no ‘bad’ songs here, but compared to the usual offerings from Leprous, fans of the band might find many of them a bit underwhelming.
In terms of concept, the album does have a very personal throughline, and I think it might be best to just allow Solberg to speak for himself here. As quoted on his website:
“It’s called 16 because that’s when the first really, really bad things started happening to me in life. From 16 to 19, there were a lot of very life-defining moments that happened to me, and that changed me,” he says. “That’s when I kind of lost my innocence and I started realising that life is serious and bad shit can happen. A lot of pretty drastic things happened within those three years. But this album is not only about the bad things. It’s also about some of the career-defining moments, like the moment I started playing with the band and began to find a community to belong to. Emotionally, I’m a bit of everything, so it covers the entire emotional spectrum!”
This throughline is, of course, a bit vague and hard to follow. It’s difficult to see exactly how each track connects to it because it is so personal. But it’s neat to know that the added depth is present for any die-hard fans who want to go digging.
There are some fun songs on the album. It’s a good listen, and he definitely has a good enough voice to anchor a solo career. Still, I think his efforts are a bit better as part of Leprous.
Rating: Green
The most recent, Aphelion, released in 2021. I gave it a Purple rating and it ranked 5th in 2021’s Top 40 Rankings.
Obviously, this is different for every band. I would love to see some compiled statistics where thousands of artists provided data for their typical songwriting approach.