Soekโs new single โWe Were Taller Thenโ arrives like a memory caught between light and shadow, as it meditates on the strange magic of childhood and the ache that follows once itโs gone. Released October 3, 2025, the track extends composer Grant Borlandโs signature blend of organic warmth and electronic texture, this time leaning even deeper into nostalgia. The project pulls together musicians from Michigan, Croatia, and Vancouver, yet the final piece feels remarkably intimate, as if the whole world suddenly shrank to the size of one remembered afternoon.
The song opens with a piano motif that glimmers and flows with an almost weightless continuity. Itโs steady, alive, and delicately insistent, like a kidโs feet skimming pavement on a summer bike ride. Thereโs a percussive bounce to the playing. It is subtle but intentional as it nods to Borlandโs decision to treat the piano as motion. As the motif repeats, layers build around it, creating the sense of time looping back on itself, each passing a slightly different shade of the same emotion.
Then the strings enter. Recorded live by Martin Kutnar and Session Strings Studio in Croatia, they arrive with a silvery, smooth, steely, and unmistakably human glow. They rise and fall like breath, grounding the airy piano in something weightier. Their presence gives the track its emotional center, echoing that childhood combination of fearlessness and fragility. Synths drift through the background like a soft haze, stitching the organic and the electronic together until the track feels suspended between worlds.
Even without lyrics, โWe Were Taller Thenโ says plenty as it evokes scraped knees, long shadows on sidewalks, the illusion of invincibility, and the realization, years later, that those moments mattered more than we knew. Itโs a beautifully restrained piece, a small story told with big feeling, and one that lingers long after the final note fades.
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Review by: Naomi Joan