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Emmy the Great

First Love

Label: Close Harbour

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Ah, remember the ignorant bliss of first love where every gesture was unquestionably amazing... uncomplaining of receiving that scrappy homemade calendar because it's "first love" right? Brilliantly, youthful tolerance is thwarted with Emmy the Great, arriving in her understated beauty with her debut First Love, armed to rip off the plaster of social conditioning to reveal its bleeding reality.

Delivered all with the singing grace of a saint, each lyrical development is a surprise and a continual antithesis to her pure voice. With the namesake track twisting defiance into liberating ambiguity in lyrics "But now that I have, I would do it again/I would forget that I'd piss on a grave," the audience anticipates quirky swirls as Emma-Lee Moss surrenders her personal perspective ready for the nods or frowns of whoever lends an ear.

Opening with the floating 'Absentee' the rumbling guitars fool us with sweet optimism to deliver a haunting listing of the remnants of the absentee. The sadness flows into the next track and within a line, Emma swiftly sums up realisations of human nature with astounding cleverness in lyrics, "You say one man is the parachute and the other is the knife that cuts the brake," and this is only track two. After years surviving on bootleg releases and live performance this album earns its acclaim, there just no space or need for filler.

While her lyrical talents profoundly maintain her signature style, the diversity within the anti-folk genre, each song feels fresh with ambition for success, implemented by the simple change in pace and instrumentals. Significantly, half way through the album, 'War' showcases the talent of Emmy the Great and steps up the pace of the album; the union of choral strings and piano emulates a decadence of Emma which sometimes the trusty acoustic cannot fully capture. Saying that, the softness and borderline silence in 'MIA' conjures a heart-warming trance, making it one of the captivating tracks on the album. 

Although, her mediations may lend to provoke the empathy of the audience, the upbeat melodies in first single 'We Almost Had a Baby' and 'Bad, Things are Coming, We Are Safe' show a clear stance that Emma wants us to see the humor in the trivialities of life. In 'First Love', she refers tongue-in-cheek to the overplayed 'Halleluiah': "the tape in the cassette deck was choking/Spat out a broken hallelujah," somehow knowing we all overdid that song in our youthful love, poking fun at the experience of first love. So whether you listened to the "original Lenard Cohen version", Emma connects to the audience with that familiarity of experience we cannot escape from, making her album a personal and sharing retreat. - Gemma Dempster