“Anodyne” opens with the kind of quiet, tentative confidence that suggests either deep artistic intent or someone sitting alone in a room thinking, “Alright, I guess I’m doing all of this myself now.” In this case, it’s both. Satsuma, the solo project of Edinburgh multi-instrumentalist Cam Halkerston isn’t just DIY in the vague, aesthetic sense. This is actual DIY: every instrument played, every vocal recorded, every production decision made by one person who has decided, quite firmly, not to wait around for permission.
And you can tell. Not in a bad way, but in the way that makes the whole thing feel less like a product and more like a document. “Anodyne” doesn’t arrive polished and market-tested; it arrives slightly frayed at the edges, like it’s been carried around for a while before being shown to anyone.
The opener, “Ash And Dust,” takes its time in a way that feels almost confrontational. There’s a long, lingering intro built on warm, arpeggiated guitar that doesn’t so much build tension as it quietly insists you sit with it. When the vocals finally come in, they’re low, slightly slurred, and very deliberately unpolished. It’s the musical equivalent of someone speaking honestly without rehearsing the sentence first. The influence palette of ’90s alt rock, a bit of Radiohead-esque fragility, maybe some Smashing Pumpkins moodiness is there, but it’s not being paraded around. It just sort of exists in the background, like a shared language.
“Love My Lies” follows and continues this thread of minimalism, but with a heavier emotional center. There’s a weight to the vocal delivery that feels less performative and more like it just is. The track doesn’t try to resolve that tension; it just lets it sit there, which ends up being more effective than any big, cathartic payoff would have been.
The title track, “Anodyne,” is where things get more sonically assertive. The guitars thicken, the drums feel more present, and the whole thing takes on this slightly hypnotic, looping quality. It’s not explosive, exactly; it’s more like a slow, internal spiral. The kind where you’re not entirely sure when it started, but you’re definitely in it now.
Then there’s “Touch Of Your Breath,” which is brief enough that it almost feels like an interlude, but not in a throwaway sense. It strips things back even further, leaning into gentle guitar and soft atmospheric elements that create this oddly intimate, late-night feeling. It’s the quietest moment on the EP, which also makes it one of the most revealing.
“Swallowed” pulls things back into a heavier emotional space, acting as a sort of bridge between the introspection of the earlier tracks and the closing statement, “Scorched Earth.” And that closer is, appropriately, the rawest and most outwardly aggressive moment here. The guitars take on a grunge-like edge, the performance feels less contained, and there’s a sense of release; not resolution, exactly, but at least a willingness to stop holding everything quite so tightly.
What ties all of this together is a refusal to over-correct. The vocals aren’t perfectly tuned, the mixes aren’t overly smoothed, and the performances don’t feel sanded down for easy consumption. That’s a deliberate choice, and it gives “Anodyne” a kind of emotional credibility that would probably vanish if it were any cleaner.
It’s not flawless. There are moments where the roughness borders on underdeveloped, and the commitment to minimalism occasionally risks blending tracks together. But those feel like trade-offs rather than mistakes. The EP isn’t trying to be definitive; it’s trying to be honest and it comes through.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
