Sean Bertram – Everything Again (2025)
Sean Bertram’s third studio album, Everything Again, is both a culmination and a rebirth. It feels like the work of an artist at once grounded in craft and unafraid to take bold emotional risks. Hailing from Ontario, but now rooted in southern England, Bertram is a rare kind of multi-instrumentalist, not merely virtuosic, but holistic. Every element of this 12-track collection has been painstakingly shaped by his hands, from the arrangement and production to the mix itself. The result is a record that rings with intimacy while expanding outward into something lush, timeless, and quietly grand.
Everything Again thrives in its duality. It is polished but never sterile, vulnerable but never indulgent. At its core lies storytelling, Bertram’s voice moving between smooth falsetto, rich mid-range, and feather-light phrasing, always with purpose. He places emotion first, using his guitar, keyboards, and layered harmonies as accomplices rather than ornamentation. In doing so, Bertram joins a lineage of modern soul auteurs, think Mayer, Misch, Cullum, yet his sound resists easy comparison. There is too much sincerity at work, too much fluidity between styles.
The sequencing alone feels like a quiet masterstroke. The opener, ‘Everything Pt. 1’, ushers us in with restrained warmth, its motifs later mirrored in ‘Everything Again Pt. 2’, a bookend that ties the album’s meditations on love, memory, and renewal into a cohesive arc. ‘Forget You’ brims with rhythmic urgency, its percussive drive channelling the pulse of unresolved heartbreak, while ‘What’s On Your Mind’ pivots into a spacious groove, guitar chords floating like lanterns in dusk air. These are songs that move not just through sound, but through atmosphere.
‘Feels Like Falling in Love’ radiates joy without collapsing into cliché, its melodies shimmering, effervescent and free. Later, ‘I Don’t Know Why I Miss You’ pares things back into something hushed, Bertram’s voice perched delicately above muted guitar and softly brushed rhythm. It is in moments like these that his skill as an arranger shines; he knows when to withdraw, when to let silence do the heavy lifting.
Perhaps the boldest gesture is his reimagining of The Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’. Covering a song often regarded as untouchable is a risky endeavour, but Bertram sidesteps imitation in favour of reverence. His interpretation is soulful, pared back, almost conversational, as though the song is being rediscovered rather than performed. It’s a testament to his confidence as a musician, and to his understanding that the best covers are dialogues across time.
But beyond its sonic polish, Everything Again resonates because it is fundamentally human. These songs emerge from heartbreak, loss, and rediscovery, yet they never wallow. Bertram offers not an autobiography of wounds but a meditation on resilience, finding beauty in cycles: endings folding into beginnings, love repeating in new shapes. It’s a record that suggests life is not linear but circular, each chorus, each refrain, each return carrying the promise of renewal.
Elegant, groove-laden, and deeply personal, Everything Again marks Sean Bertram not just as a craftsman, but as a storyteller for whom music is language itself. Few records manage to be this refined and this heartfelt in the same breath. This one does.
Find out more about Sean Bertram on his Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify.
