Kristen Castro’s Summer Rain is a lovely, lyrical release of feelings of recovery, loss of the self, and quiet re-remembering. The prose proceeds as a dream—one that’s delicate, surreal, and feel-based—and yet gains a story that arises out of the very real and universal phenomenon of grief and personal rebirth. Castro slips through the invocation of common imagery and common settings to go deep down the deep wells of ego destruction and rebirth without ever having to state it directly. It’s strong and fragile simultaneously.

Throughout the song, she describes how pain need never scream, but can whisper, can hum, can be silent next to you. Her words make a tone that becomes memory and now, describes how the grief becomes not something that goes, but something that reconditions as the time does as well. The repeat of the “summer rain” becomes a caress—a gentle shock of freedom. The rain becomes a reminder of purification, something of nature and gentle, pouring after the hot of past pain.

There’s a real tone of contradictions in the lyrics. Castro writes of pain, not just due to loss, heartbreak, but due to something as mundane as “noon.” The minor inclusion gives us the extent to which the weight of sad emotions can make even the joyous moments feel heavy. Then we have letting go—the act of progressing onward, even if it’s by degree, as she professes that she feels as if she’s forgotten, it’s not erasing, it’s moving onward. The progression of emotions is understated, but deep.

These poems of people and fearlessness chart a quiet intelligence. Castro doesn’t draw big conclusions—she lets the listener absorb the mundane reality of people ageing and getting along, and fearlessness ebbs and flows. It’s unremarked upon, yet it feels true. It feels as if she informs us grief, at the very least fearlessness, isn’t a straight line. Some days you wade in, and other days you must desiccate in the sun.

Nature is omnipresent in the lyrics, employed to illustrate the development of the emotion rather than be obvious. The employment of the descriptions of the trees, the leaves, and the flowers as mini-portraits of Castro herself-growing, developing, reaching up to the light-is lovely and evocative. The fact that it brings to mind a flower like “tiger’s eye” brings the song to almost poem-like level, insinuating inner strength and secret beauty. These are subtle yet deeply significant moments, which make the listener feel they’ve watched the development of the emotion beneath the surface.

Repetition of the line “summer rain” throughout the entire length of the track becomes a resolute breath, governing the listener as the feelings ebb and flow. It introduces calm to the track, as if the singer reassures herself, and us, that even as it all unravels, it’s a cycle of mend. It’s not rapid. It occurs at its own pace.

What impresses in the words of Summer Rain is the way that Castro would be able to capture a grand emotional event in the most individualistic, gentle language possible. It need not be a summary of all the emotions—it assumes the ear would fill in the blanks. The song allows for space for grief, rebirth, and final serenity, all under sun-kissed rain. It’s a good harbinger of the fact that rebirth need not be thundering and overwhelming—it can be gentle, painful, and slowly unwinding back towards the sun.