Album Reviews

Album Review: Emmy The Great – First Love (Close Harbour)

By | Published on Monday 2 February 2009

Emmy The Great

It was only on listening to this album that I remembered the part in Emmy The Great’s live show at The Green Man where she played the title track, ‘First Love’, with its line about “‘Hallelujah’, the original Leonard Cohen version”. This also reminded me that at least two other bands that we saw that weekend actually played ‘Hallelujah’, yet I hadn’t been reminded of that by the two versions that were recently top of the charts. I’m not sure what this says about either my memory or the relevance of the hit parade, but I do wonder whether all this Hallelujah-ing of late is the musical world rallying around after hearing about Leonard’s money problems (you know, which led to his tour last year). Probably not. Anyway, I digress, and that is unfair because this album is a lovely piece of work, reminiscent of last year’s Laura Marling debut, a folkified sing song without cockney stylings. Emmy has performed with the likes of Lightspeed Champion and supported Martha Wainwright in the last year but this record has been self-produced, self-funded and self-released and deserves a look. From the choral opening of ‘Absentee’ to the rising plucked march of ‘Bad Things Coming’ there are some great songs on here. Though, as sweet as they sound on first listen, they do usually have some sex and death in there – and the title of the album is apparently from Samuel Beckett’s novella about a lover who leaves the woman he impregnates after they meet on a park bench. Anyway, I’m expecting this album to grow on me steadily throughout the year to come and hopefully success will go hand in hand. IM

Buy from iTunes
Buy from Amazon

READ MORE ABOUT: |