reviews / 2026 It Italiano

Forager

Even A Child Can Cover the Sun With A Finger

2026 (Ring Road/La Reserve)

progressive pop, alternative rnb, indie rock

by Marco Sgrignoli

Some records are magnetic. One note, and you’re already caught. A bar in, and you can’t stop listening. Of course, it helps to have the right opener—but if the spell is to hold across a full record, one track won’t carry it on its own.

Sometimes it’s about landing the right sound: catch the listener in the right mood and, given the proper emotional conditions, the chemistry more or less sustains itself. But what if the sound keeps shifting? What if the feeling won’t sit still? That’s where class comes in. And class is the most fitting way to introduce Forager—an American outfit with a single album to their name before this disarming “Even A Child Can Cover the Sun With A Finger”, released in February via Ring Road, a sublabel of Brooklyn’s La Reserve.

The opening move, “Your Good Time”, works a small miracle. Its pulsing, nocturnal synth lays a sumptuous bed for Shyamala Ramakrishna’s voice—a 27-year-old singer of Tamil origin whose expressive range can pivot from Aurora to Haim within half a line. Her centre of gravity, though, sits closer to jazz and R&B, and it’s in the more blues-leaning inflections—complete with microtonal bends—that her palette opens up into its most nuanced shades.

From there, the record keeps slipping its frame. The sound is kaleidoscopic yet poised, with a faint retro grace offset by indie-prog-pop jolts in the vein of Magdalena Bay and grooves that lock into place somewhere between wonky and broken beat. The result is a striking blend: sophisticated harmonies, timbres that rarely take the obvious route, and melodies that—crooked as they are—bury themselves in your head for days.

“Double Dutch” drifts in on a soft-focus, dreamlike mood, all crystalline, echoing guitars and finely judged gaps and swells, with harmonic chimes and gated drums straight out of Hounds of Love. “Haiku Nursery Rhyme” flips the palette at once—restless, playful, faintly Stereolab in its off-kilter whimsy.

A liquefied rhythm ushers in the knockout “Pomeranian”, built on a funky, slightly new-wave verse that leads into a bait-and-switch chorus—everything cuts out, then in comes a chromatic rise and fall that’s as unexpected as it is addictive. The lyrics are just as sticky: sharp, funny, and quietly barbed, taking aim the gentrification of behaviour before it ever reaches places.

You’ve got the right touch of vintage
A layer of grit
But I kinda think that you’re full of shit
A touch of vintage and nothing to say
A pomeranian getting its way

So far, the focus has been on Ramakrishna—but none of this lands without the precision and imagination of multi-instrumentalist Jack Broza and drummer Colum Enrique, who move effortlessly across registers and fuse them seamlessly, often within the same track. “Autobody” slips into a Beth Orton-like folk-trip-hop; “Split Lip” pairs shadowy alt-rock with dream-pop glints, rediscovering the simple power of a good riff—and of letting it breathe. Bright and just the right side of playful, “Grown Up” slides from electronics to a slightly grungy rock feel, before opening out into a sunlit late-90s pop chorus (yes—very much in Garbage territory).

It’s hard to pin down the ideal listener for something this wide-ranging. Better to give it a spin and see if the spell takes on. But anyone drawn to the more skewed, high-voltage end of jazz-pop—think Knower or Hiatus Kaiyote—will likely find plenty to get stuck into here.

(English version created with AI-assisted translation)

11/05/2026

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