The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) Fills the Room with Paperwing, Loney Dear and a String Trio
A Gothenburg Piano Ballad Written with Loney Dear, Then Lifted by Cello, Viola and Violin
The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) opens on an acoustic piano played in quick, leaping runs, and everything else in this Paperwing song grows out of that keyboard. Paperwing is the alias of Gothenburg composer and producer Jenny Soovik, who wrote the song with the Swedish artist Loney Dear and released it on April 9, 2021. Five years on, it is still the clearest view of how she builds an arrangement.
Paperwing’s The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) sits in the playlist below, beside the chamber folk and soft folk this desk keeps there, and the paperwing profile holds the full run of coverage. The duet with Loney Dear came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Give it a listen, then read on for how the arrangement grows from one piano to a string trio.
Two Voices on a Kitchen Floor Turn The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) Into a Song About Love Slipping Away
The lyric starts in a very ordinary room. Two people sit on their kitchen floor among the broken pieces of the life they built together. Both of them know that talking has started to do more harm than good. Then the chorus delivers the image that gives the song its title: their love is a waterfall, slipping through their fingers and breaking on the floor beneath them.
It is a small, domestic picture for a song that ends up so large, and that contrast is the point. Nothing in the lyric happens outside the house. Instead, the couple look at the photographs on their walls, try to remember who they were before, and accept that there is nothing left to say. All of the drama lives in how the music frames that moment.
A Duet Written by Both Singers
Soovik wrote the song with Emil Svanängen, the Swedish songwriter who records as Loney Dear, and both of them sing on it. That matters for a lyric like this one. A break-up told by one voice is a complaint. Told by two, however, it becomes a conversation in which neither side gets the last word.
Berlin On Air heard it exactly that way when the single came out. Its review described a female lead that enters with a light touch over the piano. After that, the track reveals itself as a duet in which the two voices are closely matched and at times sing in harmony. Her own site carries praise from Svanängen for her songwriting and singing, and that trust shows in how evenly the two parts are weighted.
A Piano Duet That Adds Cello, Viola and Violin Until the Final Section Plays Like a Film Score
The structure is the part of The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) that rewards close listening. The Bandcamp credits list five performers: Soovik on vocals and piano, Svanängen on vocals, Lovisa Samuelsson on cello, Alma Möller on viola and Amelie Evmark on violin. In addition, Soovik produced the recording with Linnéa Ljungblad and Zimon Holmberg.
That is a small ensemble, and the arrangement uses it patiently. First, the piano and the two voices carry the opening. Then the strings come in piece by piece, so the song keeps widening as it goes. Berlin On Air traced the same arc. In its reading, the sound moves steadily away from conventional indie folk and, by the end, takes on the character of a soundtrack ballad. As a result, the final section is the part most likely to raise goosebumps.
It runs 3 minutes 51 seconds on Spotify. Meanwhile, Bandcamp files it under chamber pop, art pop and ballad, while the release itself sits between indie folk, indie pop and pop. That is a fair description of a song that begins with a piano and a voice and finishes with a string section in full flow.
Who The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) Is For
This suits listeners who come to indie folk for the songwriting and stay for the arrangement, especially those who like a piano ballad that is willing to grow into chamber pop. Two reference points help. Agnes Obel has built a catalogue around the piano with cello and violin gathered close, from Philharmonics in 2010 onwards. Fans of that sound will recognise the way Paperwing lets the strings settle around the keyboard. Damien Rice is the other marker, for 9 Crimes, the 2006 piano duet with Lisa Hannigan. In that song, too, two voices work through a relationship in trouble without either one winning the argument.
Where the Song Sits in Paperwing’s Catalogue
Paperwing describes her own music as cinematic, mystical and emotionally charged avant-pop, and elsewhere she pairs strings with glitch and synths. By contrast, The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) is the acoustic side of that project. It followed Blackbirds in January 2021 and Alone We Walk The Land in 2018, and it came two years before String Fling in 2023. In 2021 it was also picked up by Chalkpit and the B2TW Music Community alongside Berlin On Air. Today it still works as a first song for anyone new to her.
From the AcousticMusic.News curator team:
“The credits name one piano, two singers and three string players, and no drummer or bassist. Every lift in this song has to come from people playing and singing, so when the strings finally gather in the closing section it sounds like a room filling up, not a mix being turned louder.”
Where to Hear Paperwing’s The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2) and Follow a Gothenburg Composer
The Spotify player at the top of this article streams The Fall (Waterfall, Pt. 2), and the song is also on Apple Music. The official video with Loney Dear is on her YouTube channel.
Follow Paperwing on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and Deezer. She also posts on Instagram and Facebook, and her official site collects the rest of the catalogue.
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