Orion by Orion Sun

Review written by Space Cadet

From the first note, Orion Sun’s 2024 self-titled album Orion makes you feel like you’re being pulled into a gravitational orbit. This 14-track album defies typical listening experiences, drawing us as listeners into a soundscape all its own. It is an intimate exploration of love, heartbreak, and personal evolution painted with sound mirroring the ethereal. Sun has always been known for her ability to create deeply personal yet universally resonant music, as we see in her 2020 album, Hold Space for Me. In Orion, she handles that gift gracefully, offering a body of work filled with raw emotion. The album floats in a space where R&B, indie, and jazz are blended uniquely and dreamlike. Sun creates an atmosphere that’s uniquely her own, while still capturing the genre-blurring sound that fans of artists like SZA, Frank Ocean, and Daniel Caesar know and love.

The beautifully intimate opening track, “When I Was In Love,” sets the tone of the album. This track opens with Sun on a walk through a forest. We hear birds chirping, wind howling, and Suns’ soft humming. This creates a tranquil sound that feels like a moment of personal reflection, as if Sun is lost in thought, surrounded by nature’s quiet serenity. Her striking and emotional vocals are the heart of the track, conveying a deep longing and nostalgia for a past love. The piano adds to this atmosphere with its soft and delicate notes, creating a sense of intimacy and vulnerability. Behind the piano, drums and subtle electronic elements provide depth without overpowering her raw emotional tone. The use of string instruments, though slight, further emphasizes the bittersweet nature of fleeting love. As the warmth of this early love fades, the song reveals the heartache and internal conflict beneath, making “When I Was In Love” a grounding reflection on love’s instability.

“Mary Jane” is Sun’s illustration of marijuana as a crutch to cope with emotional pain, turning to it as a vice to try and escape her heartbreak. The track explores the idea of using external substances to temporarily ease her pain. It highlights the complex relationship between comfort and avoidance. The repetitiveness of the chorus mirrors the behavior of relying on something like marijuana to numb our difficult emotions. The song’s instrumentation is centered around her distinctive vocals, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and drums, enhancing the intimate and hazy atmosphere. The whole time I was listening to the album, I felt as if I was wrapped in a cloud of smoke. The acoustic guitar carries the main melody, providing a soothing, rhythmic foundation. The bass guitar grounds the track, and subtle electronic elements, like synths, add ethereal quality. “Sweet” holds a similar theme to “Mary Jane,” comparing her addiction to nicotine with her addiction to her past lover. Sun portrays both of these vices as both a refuge and a trap that offers calm but never really addresses the deeper pain below the surface.

At its core, Orion grapples with the tensions between connection and isolation. Themes of love, heartbreak, and self-reflection are the heart of the album. Tracks like “These Days” further illustrate this, with Sun reflecting on the cyclical nature of life and relationships. Her lyrics have a sense of inevitability, like she is caught in a loop. The repetition in the instruments and lyrics underscores this feeling, creating a hypnotic effect. Sun’s ability to create this effect is one of the album’s greatest strengths. This album resonates deeply by inviting listeners to explore their own vulnerability. It captures that universal tension between wanting to move forward yet feeling tethered by old memories and pain, a feeling anyone who’s experienced heartbreak can understand. Past loves and old wounds linger, but rather than leaving us stuck, the album encourages growth through these experiences. It feels like a journey where listeners are guided to ask questions of themselves, searching for meaning in their emotions. Sun’s raw honesty about her own journey brings an emotional depth to Orion. Listeners are urged to sit with their feelings, to reflect, and ultimately, to heal alongside the music.