Album Review: The Sword & The Soaring by Navy Blue
Navy Blue reaches a level of clarity and technical precision that elevates his longstanding themes. The record’s patience, lyrical discipline, and craft allow his growth to shine.
Sage Elesser steps into this eighth record with a calm that feels lived in. His voice over the years sits right in the pocket—measured, sure of itself, steady in a way that says he’s no longer chasing the version of peace he used to rap about. He’s already found it, or at least found the rhythm that keeps him close to it. A decade of self-study sits in that tone: patient, grounded, completely unhurried. What used to be cloudy is clean now, like he finally opened a window and let the air in. There’s warmth in that steadiness. You can hear the same writer in his previous works, but he sounds freer, lighter on his feet, less guarded about showing joy alongside grief. The years between Songs of Sage: Post Panic! and Memoirs in Armour taught him how to balance both without forcing either.
This one does feel like that balance made audible—a culmination, yes, but also a conversation with himself that keeps moving forward. No posturing, just a man who’s grown into his tools and learned that faith is muscle memory. The Sword & The Soaring begins not as a breakthrough but as a settling, a moment where everything he has built with dedication of steady craft finally holds its own weight. The grain in his voice feels lived-in, his delivery more conversational than confessional, the measure of someone who no longer needs to prove that introspection can be art. What once sounded like murmurs through fog now comes through in clean light. The record opens with that composure and refuses to let go of it, proof that growth doesn’t always mean louder statements, just clearer ones.
He doesn’t avoid the specifics. On “God’s Kingdom,” he remembers family tragedies: “I’m the one who needed healing,” a couple of lines later, “Mom crying, we flew down to Mississippi.” His voice doesn’t crack; instead, he names the pain and then points to the work: “Self‑care is my birthright/I shine light on what I gripe over.” The track’s gentle piano and soft drums leave enough air for each line to land. It might be the first time he so plainly connects personal suffering to the possibility of spiritual sovereignty. Where earlier releases left grief hanging unresolved, here he threads it through repeated affirmations. He doesn’t compare himself to other rappers. He isn’t interested in positioning his trauma as currency. Instead, he offers his growth as evidence, where a man who still doubts but now knows how to name his needs.
“You don’t gotta die to live again, we on the mend.” That line from “The Bloodletter” sets a motion that continues through the album: acknowledging wounds and moving anyway. Over a drum pattern that feels like loose soil under bare feet, he unspools his resurrection narrative—brothers and uncles lost, lessons pulled from suffering, a vow that healing is not a performance but a process. The sample crackles like a home recording, the bassline stays soft, and his voice sits front and center. When he insists, “I rise from out the spot that such a power died/My light source projecting, I don’t cower at my shadow size anymore,” it sounds less like sermonizing and more like a reminder to himself. That clarity marks the whole project; he doesn’t float above the beat anymore, he walks through it.
That sense of grounded clarity mentioned earlier runs through “Sunlight of the Spirit.” He begins by situating himself outdoors: “I’m sitting in the sunlight of the spirit/This life too beautiful to hide what I’m feeling,” he raps. It’s a startlingly simple image. The beat does little more than loop a piano and a hushed vocal sample, leaving a long horizon for the verses to stretch. He confesses that he had to grow up fast—childhood trauma forcing him to be “karmic proof.” Yet he learns that his heart is his home, no matter how unstable the house that holds it. He confesses that he had to grow up fast—“Childhood trauma make you grow fast.” Yet he learns that his heart is his home: “I say the heart is where the home at.” He wonders aloud how one stays close “when we dealt pain in doses” in the first verse. These lines aren’t rhetorical. They are questions he lives. The song presents them without resolution, letting the feeling hang like dust in sunlight. His cadence is patient. That restraint marks his evolution—it’s not that the words are fewer, but they carry more weight because he doesn’t bury them in filler.
Navy Blue’s growth reveals itself in how he approaches grief without wallowing. “Orchards” pivots from sadness to gratitude: “Them postcards that I sent from the depths of me/Fled from hellish ways to heaven fleet.” The bar describes a hand making work out of chaos—flipping negativity toward healing. When he follows with “I love the dark because the light meaning my brother near,” he presents darkness as a space of intimacy rather than despair. The production by Child Actor matches him: muted keys, a sampled string line that wheezes like a sigh, drums with just enough room to breathe. There is no dramatic drop; the beat is a field where he lays his memories. Halfway through, he repeats “Kept it bottled in, we was dealt so many losses that we gotta win.” Instead of leaning on, he sharpens the line, giving the refrain a new weight each time he breathes into it.
If the first half of the album charts his spiritual inventory, the second half expands on his relationships, particularly with himself. “If Only…” reads like a letter and a recorded dialogue. He recalls everything, then admits, “If only I could love you like you think I can/I had no love for me, I found relief in open hands.” The beat recedes into a quiet loop, allowing their conversation to play out. He tells his father he wishes he could be the perfect son, then confesses that he worries about reapers and sowers. His father responds with a whispered apology. The moment is deeply personal, yet he shares it without exhibitionism; he wants us to see healing in progress. There is no melodramatic payoff, no triumphant crescendo. The gift is that he extends grace to both of them: “You will never lose me, I’m forever yours, honorably,” he promises, turning the line into a vow to himself.
“Soul Investments” and “Sharing Life” anchor the album’s familial heartbeat. On the former, he reflects that he “can see my father in his sons and daughters,” and then visualizes building “a bridge above troubled water.” The production uses subtle drums and a bright guitar by Sebb Bash to give his lines a buoyant lift. Later in the song, he squeezes the sun into a crescent and marvels at this improbable geometry. It reads as a metaphor for making space for joy in a life defined by heaviness. “Sharing Life,” meanwhile, stretches a single theme—love beyond attachment—across a shimmering soul loop. “The spirit is alive, praise your heavenly undying energy/I must admit that sometimes it don’t make sense to me,” he intones. It is one of the album’s most direct declarations of communal endurance. There’s nothing ornamental about the language; he’s describing an ethic he practices daily. When he says he cherishes the darkest nights, you can hear a man who has made friends with the void.
The sole track with a guest verse, “24 Gospel,” becomes a statement on trust rather than competition. Navy flips his own tears into lessons and calls the song a “transmutation”—a process of turning pain into something useful. The beat, courtesy of Animoss, wraps his voice in vintage soul samples. When Earl Sweatshirt enters, he doesn’t outshine Navy, but he extends the exercise. Earl’s verse references Sisyphus and spirituality, his delivery loose but focused. Instead of using the feature as a co-sign, Navy uses it as a mirror—another voice processing similar burdens. Their interplay feels like two craftsmen trading techniques rather than one-upping each other. It emphasizes the humility that runs through the record, as even when he invites friends, he does not treat them as ornaments but as participants in a shared practice.
When you play on “The Phoenix,” it might have been the obvious place for flourish, but he refuses the mythic cliché. Instead, he starts with a plea: “To live and die and rise again, a phoenix mitosis/The way I split myself in two, the water moving Moses.” The line flips the album title; the sword becomes a tool for cutting away old narratives. The production uses chimes and a beautiful piano sample to evoke the new morning after a storm. Later, he raps, “You ain’t a phoenix, you ain’t a phoenix, you a human being.” In a culture obsessed with reinvention, he reminds us that the work is about staying human. The later verses ask his children to carry on the discipline: “Put the sword down and the shield/I’m here now, it’s time to heal.” He just steps back, leaving the line hanging, trusting that the work will continue.
A major difference between this record and earlier Navy Blue projects is his relationship to his longtime fans. He no longer treats the audience as distant observers, as he invites us into his practice. He shares intimate dialogues with his father, he names his children, and he confesses his doubts. None of the self-pity occasionally crept into Songs of Sage. Instead, there is self-awareness. He knows his triggers, acknowledges them, and keeps moving. He doesn’t ask for sympathy here. He demonstrates how you can carry grief and faith simultaneously. In doing so, he positions his music less as a personal diary and more as a toolkit. He offers instructions, blessings, and reminders, then steps away.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “The Bloodletter,” “Sunlight of the Spirit,” “If Only…”