Rafael Green’s new EP Solace, out today, invites listeners into an evocative and genre-defiant soundscape where chamber folk meets the psychological and surreal. Across five tracks, Green crafts a deeply introspective body of work rooted in magical realism, emotional catharsis, and sonic exploration, a project that both expands the progressive folk tradition and excavates the unconscious.
Drawing inspiration from authors like Gabriel García Márquez and Haruki Murakami, Solace feels like a set of musical short stories, each one casting a different spell. From its sweeping, often bombastic arrangements to moments of delicate intimacy, the EP balances grandeur and restraint with ease. Strings swell and recede like inner tides; woodwinds and layered vocals echo through lyrical dreamscapes; intricate guitar work guides the journey forward. But for all its instrumental elegance, this is also a record rooted in emotional excavation.
Green began therapy during the making of Solace, and the work became a canvas for the personal revelations that unfolded. As he explored themes of vulnerability, protection, and self-isolation, those internal shifts began to color the songs, not only lyrically but structurally. The arrangements reflect that emotional release: heavy yet precise, dramatic but never overindulgent. These tracks don’t just tell stories, they unravel, haunt, and illuminate.
Based in North Carolina’s Triangle area, Rafael Green performs his original music with the Rafael Green Band (RGB), a collective that fuses his songwriting with the singular talents of local musicians Justin Ellis, Will Kitchin, and Isabela Peterson. Together, they bring a dynamic, orchestral energy to the material, whether in the studio or on stage.
Though Solace stands firmly in Green’s distinct sound, fingerpicked guitar patterns, fluid time signatures, and featherweight vocal melodies — it also draws from a wide spectrum of influences. Born in Wraysbury, England, and raised between there and Tucson, Arizona, Green has long blended the aesthetics of his transatlantic upbringing. The introspective stylings of English folk icons like Nick Drake mingle here with the textured experimentalism of Radiohead. Progressive rock touchstones like Tool and The Mars Volta pulse beneath the surface, while nods to classical figures such as Andrés Segovia and Leo Brouwer round out his hybrid musical vocabulary.
The result is an EP that resists categorization yet feels utterly cohesive. At times, Solace evokes the dark beauty of a folk opera — something closer to storytelling theater than a conventional singer-songwriter release. But it never veers into abstraction. Instead, the EP feels grounded in lived experience, in the slow process of becoming.
There’s an arc to Solace that mirrors personal transformation. The listener enters a labyrinth of symbols and sonic layers, each track a door to a different inner chamber. As the record unfolds, emotional clarity emerges, not as a resolution, but as a deepened understanding. There’s no final answer here, just a sense of arrival into the complexity itself.
Released today, Solace is now available on all major streaming platforms. It’s an immersive, genre-crossing debut that positions Rafael Green as one of progressive folk’s most thoughtful and emotionally resonant new voices; a songwriter who isn’t afraid to go deep, get weird, and find beauty in the shadow.
