Rating: 5/5
Review:
Superb stuff from Emily Barker
I think this is absolutely excellent. Emily Barker is a remarkable songwriter and performer who deserves to be far better known and these stripped down versions of some of her material from the beginning of her career to the present show just how good she is.
The recording is close-miked and very intimate. The songs are all recorded without overdubs or edits on two-track tape: just Barker, her guitar and her harmonica. The combination of this and the material she sings here makes the effect stunning, I think. She has always had a genius for writing about common themes like love and loss in a uniquely evocative way, and also for writing about unusual but emotive things with a rare, slightly sideways approach which gives real poignancy to everything she does. Here, for example, Letters tells heartbreakingly of a family displaced and parted by conflict, and Oh Lord I Want An Exit is in the voice of a man at the end of his life wishing for death to be reunited with his wife - and I challenge anyone to listen to this fabulous performance of it and remain unmoved. In tone the disc reminds me rather of Natalie Merchant's superb self-titled album of last year, but it's not all so intense. There are sweeter songs of love here, too, and the whole album is a wonderfully listenable, rewarding treat.
Barker is in great voice, sometimes sounding deceptively light and girly in fine and poignant contrast to what she is singing about, and she plays her guitar and harmonica beautifully and wholly appropriately for these settings.
I love Emily Barker's work with The Red Clay Halo, which I think is quite remarkable. This is up there with the best of it, I think, and I would recommend this extremely warmly - it is great work from a very, very fine and distinctive songwriter and performer.
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