Now That Waving is All That You Do

(pic via icelight's Flickr)

Emmy the Great - On the Museum Island (mp3)(buy)

It feels longer than it's been.  Only a year and a half since I first saw Emmy the Great (myspace), and even then she'd already amassed a following in the UK and done a New York gig or two.  I've talked about her plenty.  A disproportionate chunk of my hard drive's been given over to this woman, her two EPs (one of which was available for one whole day) and singles and live radio performances and bad rips of streaming demos and third-hand versions of vinyl-only releases.

At last, First Love.

Figuring out just how good this first record is is difficult for me.  Having cycled through most all this material in some form before, each track brings either the passive comfort of recognition or the shock of a new arrangement.  And Emmy's voice completely disarms me, it's hard to harp when you're in mid-swoon, she wins all arguments.  Spencer said, "She could sing me perezhilton.com and it would sound good;" he's right, I'd be FiRST!1! all over that shit.

Thankfully she's working with better stuff.  All my favorites - "Gabriel," "Two Steps," "Edward is Dedward" - are missing, as is fan favorite "Canopies and Grapes" (one of the few Emmy songs I actively dislike), and it's still tough to argue with what we got.  Perhaps that's because there's the consistency through her work of a self-sure artist; her writing makes wise choice of situation, gives nicely observed details, shows a strong sense of language and has perfected an effective tone of contemplative disappointment.  Several songs caustically address a failed or failing relationship, but her delivery's so even-keeled and the vocals so bright you can't come away bitter.  You instead wish her a lifetime of lousy lovers for sake of the impending catalog.

News that she'd holed up with The Earlies to record this had me afraid each track would come overwhelmed with bloat.  Hers are songs best kept small, and for a while she's succeeded by simply rearranging three elements - her own muddy guitar playing as foundation, plucky acoustic fills and harmonies for definition and emphasis (you can't underestimate the dimension Euan Hinshelwood of Young Husband brings to the band), and on point, Emmy's vocals riding high.  Needn't have worried.  Record's first track, "Absentee," very ably opens things up; its unassuming beginning builds with loose snare percussion and farty synth bassline to a point where, somehow, lines like "the fallow has grown/all the fields are yellow" feel triumphant.  The words "church music" see the entrance of a melodica, simultaneously undercutting the cliché an organ would present and displaying a sense of restraint.  If you've gotten used to the My Bad EP version of "M.I.A.", First Love's take will give you pause.  But it works, works better than the old, as the song - Emmy at her morbid best, it's from the point of a view of a girl trapped in a car wreck (typically, she wasn't driving) listening to a mixtape - has been slowed down with post-trauma shock, dressed up with a weird calliope/crystal glassware whistle.

A similar tempo change ruins "24."  So great as a breezy solo rant, here it's ponderous, calls a drama and an attention to itself that it can't withstand.  Likewise, I've never been a fan of "War," a shrill, frantic little number that can't escape the pretension of its title.  And while the album's title track eventually convinced me it was both quoting and mentioning Leonard Cohen to good purpose, name drops and clever winks generally distance me from a tune.  The honky tonk "Dylan" - which has a gorgeous, loose start - might similarly win me over, one day, but for now it's off-putting.  (And I keep fixating on the line "like reading an Italian book from the Thirteenth Century," which seems odd, forced.)

Everything else is aces.  Of the newer material:  An intimate reprise of "Easter Parade" grounds the original while melodically commenting on it.  Placed back to back, "We Are Safe" and the waltz "Everything Reminds Me of You" are shelter, I want to crawl inside them and watch it rain.  "On the Museum Island" - which left little impression when she played it during CMJ - is one of her very best.  Personal and perfect, it navigates a crowd of emotion, finds the necessity and tragedy of change.  It makes me well up, when its Oooos hit I leak.

I suppose the best measure of the record would be that after all the waiting and contemplating there is very little on First Love with which to be disappointed.  I feel no need to go back to the earlier versions of most of these songs, they've finally been finished and they've been bettered.  I will treasure this, thank you.

If you're reading this in England - odds is you ain't - First Love is available today, right now, yes.  The full album is supposedly streaming here, though that's not working for me.  It can be purchased here.  A U.S. release date is still forthcoming - though Rough Trade does ship internationally; with postage and the exchange rate, it should run you a little less than $18.  (I haven't gotten mine yet, and have no idea what's on the bonus EP other than "six acoustic tracks.")

*

Taylor Swift - Fifteen (mp3)(buy)

Little wisdoms.

Submitted here, because I know some of you won't give something a chance unless you can touch it feel it let it rattle around your earbuds a bit.  And after a lousy SNL performance and a Grammy appearance during which Miley Cyrus caterwauled all over this song (thereby proving its words), Taylor Swift (myspace) deserves another chance from you. The rest of the world's way ahead of me; her sophomore album only missed beating out Lil' Wayne for last year's sales crown because of its late release date.  She doesn't need my help, but:  She got my $10 and my respect.

It's easy to respect Swift, who wrote her first hit single (called, ugh, "Tim McGraw") when she was a freshman in high school, who has had a hand in writing every song on her two records, who reeks of honesty and humility in all the right ways.

It's also easy to get dismissive.  Swift is a golden-locked nineteen-year-old Nashville product who dated a Jonas Brother.  Her Fearless often feels like it's walking a foot-wide balance beam while wearing Nerf armor.  Record's got so much formula and polish Mr. Clean should get a shout in the liner notes, her lyrics often embrace the vague, her voice is clean and pretty but sort of nondescript.  And c'mon, listen to that song, it's a nineteen-year-old telling a fifteen-year-old that fifteen-year-olds don't know shit when nineteen-year-olds know shit-minus themselves.  And Swift's not even learning from her own mistakes, she's benefitting from those of her friend.  If I wanted to be snide, I'd say it's a song that deserves a sequel in another four years - assuming Abigail dishes up another life lesson or two.

But:  C'mon, listen to that song.  Other than the mandolin - someone's begging to have his fingers chopped off - it's about as perfect a tune as could be fashioned.  Swift sings the verses with wide eyes.  It's earnest in ways a teenager would be, then the choruses are earnest in the way a best friend or older sister would be.  If the writing - Swift wrote this one herself - forgoes specifics for generalities, they're the honest generalizations from which young goals are made (a boy with a car!  the captain of the football team!).  (In her crossover hit "Love Story," on the other hand, the vagueness just reveals a clichéd fantasy life.  The lack of imagination hurts worse because the fucking chorus buries itself in your brain.)  When it has specific details, it obscures them out of tender  respect:  "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind."  Swift's song isn't condescending or overwise, just situated and concerned.

Prolonged exposure can have the unfortunate effect of making Fearless' A and B material run together, but there's some real worthwhile stuff on there.  "The Way I Loved You" is an almost too-perfect contrast of adorable comfort and dramatic stomp; the frustration in Swift's voice when she sings "He calls exactly when he says he will" is hilarious.  Swift plays underdog in "You Belong with Me," but she can only properly work that angle - a universal one, right? - if she starts to define herself as something other than a pile of secondhand fantasies and underattached urges.  She does a little bit of that in "The Best Day," a gentle self-penned song for her mother where she calls on specific memories to acknowledge her ongoing embrace of childhood fantasy and its limited language.  "It's the age of princesses and pirate ships and seven dwarfs, Daddy's smart and you're the prettiest lady in the whole wide world."  The language might be regressive, but Swift is doing the same thing she does in "Fifteen," knowing now what she knew then, moving on with it.

tags: emmy the great  taylor swift  

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