The Brighton-based artist’s EP is an evocative ode to Arcadia.

Weaving together intimate folkloric mythologies, ‘green is the shadow’ is an evocative ode to Arcadia. This debut release from Brighton-based zosia on a hill (aka Zosia Szymanoska) – who some will know as part of big long sun’s live setup – brims with melodic charm, evoking the mountains, broken hearts, memories, and the mysterious threads of human connection. Flowing between reflections on the pastoral and songs of impassioned pleas, Zosia captures love in its quaking entirety.

Zosia’s lo-fi acoustic sensibility resonates throughout the EP, especially in the opening track, ‘the light shines through’. Her fingerpicking dances behind ethereal vocals, which glide nymph-like from verse to chorus. Sharp intakes of breath twinge in pain, before giving way to her devotional invocation: “What a perfect little world.” Such reflective intimacy permeates the EP, particularly evident in the sustained vocals during the chorus of ‘whisper of a moment’. Zosia elongates the vowel sounds of “wide”, “hide”, and “lied” at the end of each chorus line, softly dwelling on these bittersweet truths, only to be silenced by the fleeting whispered refrains. As the longest song on the album, ‘whisper of a moment’ unfolds as an ancestral tale – calling to the constellations and “the promise of the moon”. Yet, ending on a minor chord, Zosia’s story remains unfinished, adding to the album’s inherent elusiveness.

Voice and instrument merge in quiet contemplation across each track. In ‘interlude – storm’, the guitar’s gentle scale becomes a secondary voice, complemented by Zosia’s hymnal melody. Resembling a choir boy lostin the altar, this brief harmony memorialises the empathy of the opening tracks, venturing towards the devastating vulnerability of the album’s epilogue. Played in a lower octave and paired with Zosia’s melancholic vocals, the final three songs lay bare the heart’s raw wounds. With‘it’s not easy’, Zosia’s ascending chorus slowly mends this brokenness, whilst the missed notes and buzzes in ‘i will give my heart to you’ capture the humbling awkwardness of offering yourself to another. Reminiscent of the tender subtlety of Julia Jacklin’s ‘When the Family Flies In’, ‘i will give my heart to you’ is a sacramental prayer. The post-chorus moans and the promise that the song’s her beloved writes “will get stuck in her head”, expose a deeply intimate desire often kept hidden.

The album’s conclusion, ‘i set out to find you’, is a yearning elegy for a lost lover. The mellow tones of the previous tracks are overcome by Zosia’s resolute declaration to “battle the forests and the oceans” in pursuit of what has been taken from her. As the acoustic melody ebbs and flows, harmonies between Zosia and big long sun’s Jaime Broughton culminate in a cathartic crescendo – a cycle of longing that escapes and returns. An acoustic performer par excellence, zosia on a hill’s debut is a tender meditation of the pastoral and devotional. ‘green is the shadow’ marks an exciting introduction to the folkloric solace woven through Zosia Szymanoska’s music.