“I wasn’t happy. And I was attaching my happiness to my music, so I wanted to quit music completely,” Cleo Sol told Dazed in 2023. She had left behind a decade of making music and managed to do the unthinkable: disappear from the music industry. From 2012 to 2017, she was held to a deal from the now-defunct Island Records, which produced nothing anyone ever heard. It took getting married to Inflo, a producer so allergic to publicity that it was practically his superpower, for Sol to find her way back to music.
The married couple started their own label, Forever Living Originals, and a collective of artists called SAULT. And while the maneuvering worked well for mostly underground musicians like SAULT, who have zero interviews or photos, it didn’t seem like anyone ever bothered to tell the public not to expect Cleo Sol. Her masterful 2020 debut, Rose in the Dark, made the year-end lists of Complex and Clash, and she did it with no press release. Mother dropped the following August, a late summer dominated by two rappers.
In “23,” Sol sings, “Mama, please, stop acting twenty-three/You’ve got responsibilities/Are you still stuck in your teens?” over a harp, a bouncing xylophone, and a sweet bassline. It’s a song scolding her mother for never growing up, escaping the perils of adulthood through drinking, and striking back at her daughter with a sharp tongue hidden beneath a devilish smile. Sol’s just being harsh when she says, “Your bitter tongue is sharper than a knife/Cut so deep inside/Don’t care with a smile/That I am a child.” She’s worn out. But then she sings, “The little stars and the locked-up dreams/The missing pieces, they’re in me.” She’s of the mind that it’s not just her childhood that was stolen; it’s her mother’s as well. Sol’s not just protecting a newborn on her cover; she’s doing damage control for all that came before. A backpack full of damaged dreams. Ready or not, her own cycle may just be beginning.
The album begins with the sound of Inflo’s hands on the piano. He plays on nearly every track and assembled this exact band for the session. Nathan Allen on drums, Alex Bonfanti on bass, Kadeem Clarke on Rhodes, Graham Godfrey on congas. Something we’ve got to love about Sol is that she’s a gentle mother, while realizing that sometimes, you’ve got to get tough. Case in point: “Sunshine,” where she literally calls her baby “literal light,” and “Know That You Are Loved,” wherein she repeats her messages over and over again, but prettified by glorious strings. Most would stop there and think that these songs were made for kids. But listen to “Heart Full of Love,” and you’ll remember that a mother’s love will protect you from only so much. That strong, indomitable spirit has been about tough love long before now. That’s why, when the magnificent Rosie Danvers fiddles her strings, and a choir comes in during the second half, you are filled with contrasting emotions.
You can see a mother who will do anything and everything to protect her child, but also one who knows she cannot do it all. That’s what tears her heart apart. It’s a marvelous combination of strength and tenderness, made beautiful in a million different ways. “The train never stopped, never had time to unpack your trauma,” the songstress sings in “Don’t Let Me Fall,” and “Keep fighting the world, that’s how you get love, mama.” Overhearing a couple’s quarrel that turned violent, one reviewer had said the song started beautifully and then got purposefully intense. Sol is asking to be rescued by God, or a partner, or whatever’s strong enough. Starting a song saying “don’t let me fall” gives the feeling that you know what hitting the ground feels like, and it costs you something.
All these songs of devotion—about motherhood, family, and creativity—are anchored in practical needs. In “Music,” Sol explains why she sings at all. It’s not an explanation she owes anyone, but it’s satisfying to hear: music was the art form that finally kept her upright during all those years away from the industry she helped build. On “Spirit,” the album’s longest track, she jumps from the domestic to something bigger. Just like that. There’s no obvious announcement of the shift. Her mind drifts, and suddenly she’s singing of her ancestry, of a connection to something immense but invisible. The song expands to accommodate more voices and instruments. It is no longer about a singer and her baby in West London; it’s about where she thinks she came from before she was born. Without “Music” and “Spirit,” Mother would be a sixty-six-minute whisper to a single child. Even the most patient listener would feel locked out.
Her masterpiece snuck up on a lot of Sol’s listeners. Though it was released the same month SAULT put out Nine (which they made available for only 99 days before pulling it from streaming), a week or so before Ye unveiled his Donda with a series of stadium listening events, and in the same month Drake’s over-hyped Certified Lover Boy dropped. She ensured it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. Sol worked with a small team of hand-picked individuals, who “helped make this music so special and whose intentions were aligned with the honesty I was looking for,” she wrote to her most devoted followers in September.
Speaking of her long-time collaborator Inflo to Dazed, she said working with him is “true joy, happiness; it’s very spiritual.” It’s been a joy, then, watching Mother get nominated for an Ivor Novello. Marked out by its warmth and intimacy, perhaps it resonates so strongly because Sol knows how much of a risk her music is taking. Whether the prize brings in new people or not, there’s no doubt more will hear her too—thoughtful for the mainstream, not niche—voice in the future, especially after Heaven and Gold, two 2023 albums, rustles up some wider recognition. With Mother, it feels like only now we’ve really started getting to know her.
Standout (★★★★½)