Ulver is a band that build their reputation around change. Though the canon s that they initially started out as a black metal band, even within that era they immediately went into a dark folk detour and then made sure none of their metal albums sounded the same anyway. Even before shedding their metal skin and especially since then, Ulver have made sure each of their albums had their own unique identity, with something specific about its sound direction. There were albums with a more avant-garde take, and others with more of a traditional songwriting approach, starting with Wars Of The Roses but especially with The Assassination Of Julius Caesar, which heralded a fresh synthpop inspired direction, that quickly became some of the most accessible and fun set of Ulver tracks. And for a while, that seemed to have become Ulver's thing.
Since first going into the synthpop direction, the band has released other albums that weren't in that direction, but all were centered around a certain live recording, and having witnessed the band live in this era, it did feel like the live energy did differ a bit from how the main line of albums seemed to keep, thus all felt like momentary detours that didn't fundamentally affect the direction of the band, and by Liminal Animals especially it began to feel like the band was starting to use up the synthpop sounds to saturation. When this new album was announced, and the first single revealed something different, it felt like the first time in a while Ulver were decidingly going in a different direction.
Neverland is a mostly instrumental record, this being the biggest contrast to how full of Garm's gothic inflections the last couple of main line albums were. Vocals are present, some guest vocals some Garm's own, but they appear more as a set of whispers or integrated spoken word passages in a larger picture, and with the vocals taking the backseat the soundscape at large is dominated by layers of electronica. The sound, while still focused on synths, also sounds like a pretty stark contrast to the bouncy melodic synths of synthpop, even in the darker and more sombre version that Ulver used them in, with the tones used here having more in common with both old time progressive electronica and the sample-heavy IDM of the 90s.
An album I'm most reminded of is the latest Oneohtrix Point Never with how colorful the collage of sounds can be, albeit with more of an ambient focus on Neverland, something that seems to harken back to some of the bands older ambient electronica like Lyckantropen Themes or Silence Teaches You How To Sing or A Quick Fix Of Melancholy. It's a neat part of the band's discography to revisit, and even if I feel like Neverland's slightly new age-ish touches make it not feel on par with some of the best of that era, there's also more in the IDM or synthwave or Vangelis-ian progressive electronica touches that make it feel more specific to a version of Ulver that went through both synthpop and horror synth on a full project since.
Not sure how Neverland will fit in Ulver's discography as time goes on, but right now the feel of a new direction in the band's sound, even if it is very much informed by a past direction already explored, does bring more excitement than I felt lately for the band's potential in the near future.
This has been yours truly's last 2025 review. See y'all next year!
