Review: Emma Ayzenberg — Child of Saturn
Music
Emma Ayzenberg
Child of Saturn
Self-Released
Street: 09.18.2026
Emma Ayzenberg = Adrianne Lenker + Cat Power
Last week, someone very close to me and my six-year-old dog, Whiskey, both had pivotal surgeries to try and ease or cure the cancer actively threatening their lives. But I’ve spent seemingly countless hours listening to Emma Ayzenberg’s Child of Saturn and, in the end, I felt this album and how it came to me was important. There is significance in the act of finding music by interacting with real people out in the world, rather than from an app or an algorithm. Writing about the purity of music for a music magazine seems a tad hammy, but the fact is, I have never felt anything as pure as the love of a dog – except for the close second, the thrill of opening yourself up to genuine, new musical experiences.
I met Emma Ayzenberg this past July at an intimate Jill Whit house show, held at the trendy Salt Lake City venue cityhomeCollective. Ayzenberg and fellow singer-songwriter h. pruz, then on a tour of the West Coast together, were opening for Whit and her band. Ayzenberg took the stage first. Partially hidden behind her long, dark curls, she sat in front of the mic stand wielding an acoustic guitar and proceeded to grace the respectfully pensive audience with a set of folksy and ethereal originals, most of them from her upcoming debut LP, Child of Saturn.
I learned more about the album from speaking with Ayzenberg during a smoke break on the steps of the venue in between sets. I didn’t know at the time how much weight it would hold for Ayzenberg, myself, others who know her music and those who perhaps are just now discovering this distinctly special, L.A.-based indie folk musician and songwriter.
In Ayzenberg’s artist description on Spotify, she self-identifies as “someone you can cry to.” I dare you not to, especially while listening to Child of Saturn, an album which pours out more than a drop of genuine grief. Ayzenberg took the opportunity for this, her first full-length LP, to dig deep over the course of a year and 11 songs. She says she reworked each track as frequently as she saw fit, often with the help of a cast of talented studio musicians. The extended recording process was intentionally responsive to the ebbs and flows of a year’s time and, according to Ayzenberg, unfolded in subtle synchronization with her ongoing “Saturn return.” In astrology, this is when the planet Saturn realigns with where it was when you were born; in other words, it is your “natal placement.” Everyone’s first Saturn return occurs roughly between ages 27 and 33. Both Ayzenberg and myself (I turned 32 in August) are currently deeply embedded in this crucial era.
Saturn is the planet of reality checks, so the first return of one’s life often brings some “shock to the system.” While it can feel extreme, the lessons you glean during this period are really meant to teach you to be yourself and to trust yourself. Child of Saturn is Azyenberg’s reckoning with this mythical phenomenon; her own musical monument to becoming. The music on the album, like the astrological concept, can lead you to discover reality checks in yourself that you didn’t know to look for. Ayzenberg’s tender vocals and intuitive, self-searching lyrics encourage you along as you read the signs and cope with losses. Ultimately, listening to Child of Saturn is like a mindfulness exercise, as the listener tends to adopt the self-empathy exhibited by the artist herself towards herself. I’m not an astrology-head, but nonetheless, something about this album’s theme has indeed broken through my own personal brand of dark humor and run-of-the-mill nihilism.
Ayzenberg’s sound, established over the course of her prior EPs, is purported to be a blend of indie folk and chamber pop. While I think there’s actually more individuality at play with her artistry and that, as a whole, genre labels are more applicable to mainstream, industry artists, tracks like “Another Spring” and “Baby Bonsai” are quite Big Thief-adjacent. There’s also a consistently rich texture, and her music can take on a Western aesthetic from the prolific force of the pedal steel, especially on “From Your Eyes” and “Maggie,” the latter being Ayzenberg’s touching ode to admiration in people and friendship. Her lyricism is pure folk storytelling throughout, and in traditional folk-songwriter fashion, some of her songs have less structure than others. A lot of the time the music follows and responds to her gentle, sometimes crooning voice –– the crescendos of the strings and guitars and breathy synths hint at her emotional state, mirroring the valleys and peaks of her sorrows and joys in a glimmering mountain reservoir of musicianship.
The moody and liminal second track “Just A Hum,” as well as several others, put the brakes on any supposed silly optimism, however. Instead, Ayzenberg often revels in her melancholy, accepting it. In “Just A Hum,” she sings, “Give me silence, give me haze / Make it heavy, make me stay.” The more rhythmic “I Will Pretend” also contains angst. It’s a narrative track where she talks about becoming someone else for the person who matters most to you and looking through your loved one’s eyes to try and figure out who you are in the first place. “The Math of Vengeance,” meanwhile, is a dark reality check regarding the unfathomable but evidently socially excused atrocities of war and our collective culpability in it all.
There is a lot to Ayzenberg, and I am thankful for it. She bared it all on Child of Saturn, bravely facing each part of herself and considering those around her. Rather than being aggressively honest in some way, this approach fits the moment and echoes the uncertainty of the period she inhabited during the album’s writing and recording. To listen to the album is to wonder what parts of yourself you haven’t faced lately and, with hope, to develop as slowly as needed the strength to do so. –Kyle Forbush
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