Laugh Now, Cry Later arrives from a place of rupture rather than momentum. For Norwegian songwriter and vocalist Neon Ion (the solo project of Natalie Sandtorv), the album was shaped by a period of physical vulnerability, creative uncertainty, and forced re-calibration.
What began as a new record became a space for survival, as health challenges and hearing loss reshaped how the music was made and heard; Humour against heaviness, improvisation against structure, tenderness against chaos.
Recorded with a live band and driven by instinct and interaction, Laugh Now, Cry Later moves fluidly across R&B, jazz, electronics, and psych rock.
In this FM PRO interview, Neon Ion reflects on relearning how to listen, treating the voice as both texture and instrument, and finding freedom on the other side of control; Arriving at an album that feels lived rather than designed.
I never wanted to be a pop star, and jazz showed me that you could be a vocalist, not just a front figure.
Laugh Now, Cry Later follows a heavy period. What brought Neon Ion back into focus instead of letting it go?
Well, since it’s my solo project, it’s an outlet that’s always there, present in my mind. And also the project of making a new album had already started before everything started falling apart in the seams. So it became this space where every thought or feeling would get a space to unravel, process, and ended up being a therapeutic outlet for me. I always need to finish what I start!
The album is deeply personal without feeling fragile. How did you write from vulnerability without centering it as weakness?
I think one of my ways of dealing with hard stuff is finding the irony in it rather than dwelling in tragedy. I rarely sink into melancholy without seeing a way out, even though I’m very dramatic, it’s really about embracing big, expressive feelings. I’m also drawn to contrasts in art and music. I don’t think I could make a song where both lyrics and music are completely dark; the lyrics can be heavy, but the music usually brings something lighter or unexpected to keep it alive.
Losing hearing in one ear could have stopped the record. How did it change the way you listened, sang, and wrote?
I didn’t sing or write the first couple of weeks because all sound in general hurt too much. My ear had a bit of hearing left, but it was distorted. I went to Moldejazz, my favorite jazz festival, to see my husband be part of the artist in residence program, so I went to a bunch of shows, and everything was just noise to me. So I was really low, wondering how I would ever enjoy music again, completely convinced my career was over and done with.
Then there is this magic thing called the brain. It adjusts. It recalibrates. What I later learned is that when the auditory system changes, the brain slowly rewires itself, it starts reinterpreting sound, filtering, compensating, learning what to ignore and what to hold on to. After two weeks of crying constantly, having panic attacks over a fork hitting a plate, something shifted. The sounds didn’t disappear, but my brain stopped treating them as a threat. Music slowly went from being pain, to being information, to being emotion again.
That process taught me something fundamental: listening and singing isn’t just about the ears. It’s about perception, memory, and trust. And relearning how to listen became the starting point for relearning who I was as an artist.
Softer, Laugh Now, Cry Later, and Desert Bloom feel like emotional chapters. Was that intentional from the start, or did it emerge later?
All of this music was written through the process, not planned in advance. None of it was intentional in that way. This isn’t the album I set out to make, it’s better than that. It’s real life. How could I have known that so many crazy things would happen to me along the way? At some point it almost became funny, the sheer number of obstacles I had to move through. Hence the title!
What I did know was the sound I was searching for. I knew I wanted a live band in the studio, musicians in the same room. I wanted improvisation, risk, high-energy interplay, music that could hold chaos and tenderness at the same time. And somehow, in the middle of all of that, the album found its own shape.
Your voice moves between lead and texture throughout. Was treating it as an instrument a conscious shift this time?
What’s funny is that a big part of my earlier work grew out of vocal, textural improvisation, non-structures, instinct, sound before form. But then I think I became a bit tired of my expression in free improv music. So I went through a few years where I focused almost solely on composing and producing, on structure, songs, and control. At some point I knew the time had come to let those two worlds meet. To integrate them. And that, more than anything, is what excites me about this album. I don’t know what took me so long, and I definitely want to explore it even more live and on future albums!
How did hearing loss affect your studio workflow, from monitoring to frequency choices?
I had to relearn intonation. Hearing loss made me sing softer, listen deeper, and trust sensitivity over control.
Live, it’s almost the complete opposite. We always end up playing loud, physical, and high-energy, often diving into these wild jazz improvisations. It’s a beast I can’t really control, and I’m definitely a big part of feeding it. I guess I just keep circling back to big, dramatic feelings, whether they come out quietly in the studio or explosively on stage. No amount of monitors can help me when we go off, but then I’m always in a euphoric state, and muscle memory takes over.
The record spans R&B, jazz, electronics, and psych rock. What held those worlds together?
What really held it together was our shared reference backpack. We all come from different backgrounds, upbringings, and parts of Norway, but we’re drawn to the same kind of modern, rhythmic, contemporary sound. That collective taste becomes a common language.
For me, it started early. I grew up on 90s R&B because my mom had it all on cassette, but when I discovered jazz around the age of ten, something clicked. I never wanted to be a pop star, and jazz showed me that you could be a vocalist, not just a front figure. Someone inside the band, deeply involved in the music, reacting in real time, shaping the sound from within. That way of thinking stuck with me.
Somehow, all of us later ended up in the same jazz schools, shaped by similar training and curiosity. So even when the music moves between R&B, jazz, electronics, and psych rock, it’s held together by a shared musical DNA, instinct, trust, and years of listening to the same things from different angles.
Humour cuts through the heaviness. How important was irony in telling this story honestly?
The way I tell the stories in my songs is no different from how I would tell all my friends about what I was going through, with a sense of dark humor. Like the universe is out to get me kind of attitude, which is both annoying and also funny to me. It was also hilarious to witness first hand how little science and doctors cares or focuses on women’s health. Wow, don’t even get me started.
How much space did you leave for improvisation when recording with the band?
A lot! Even the arrangements are born out of improvisation. We build the songs by playing, listening, and reacting to each other in the studio, and then letting our producer, Erlend Mokkelbost, work his magic. He’s a huge part of the sound, and we’ve developed a deep trust over many years of working together. We feed him with raw material in real time, fragments, moods, accidents, and he organizes, manipulates, and sculpts it into something focused and alive. It’s a very organic process, where structure grows out of freedom rather than the other way around.
Now that Neon Ion feels freer and more playful again, what has Laugh Now, Cry Later opened up for the future?
I think it’s brought me closer to my audience. With Laugh Now, Cry Later, people get to know me better, and I feel a stronger connection than ever before. I’ve always cared deeply about each concert being a new experience, something that can only happen that night. This music leaves space for all of us on stage to go somewhere different every time, which makes each show feel alive, unpredictable, and hopefully a little euphoric.
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