Emily Barker A DARK MURMURATION OF WORDS. Everyone Sang/Thirty Tigers

Emily Barker is an Australian-born, award-winning singer-songwriter, best known as the writer and performer of the theme to the BBC’s hugely successful crime drama Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. She has released music as a solo artist as well as with various bands including The Red Clay Halo, Vena Portae and Applewood Road (with whom she released a remarkable album of original songs recorded live around a single microphone, dubbed “flawless” by The Sunday Times) and has written for film, including composing the soundtrack for Jake Gavin’s lauded debut feature Hector starring Peter Mullan and Keith Allen.

Emily Barker’s 2017 album SWEET KIND OF BLUE was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis with Grammy winning producer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and an all-star cast of Memphis session players. The success of the album, with its seamless mix of soul, blues, country and folk influences, and the globe-trotting tours to support it helped land Emily the accolade of UK Artist of the Year at the 2018 UK Americana Awards held at Hackney Empire in London.

About This Album

I’ve spent a not-insignificant amount of time over the last few years searching, reading, learning and thinking, looking into the gaps of the unspoken, the invisible, and the unacknowledged in an attempt to establish where my own sense of reality takes shape. It’s a journey that has lead to this record. The songs on the album are an exploration of climate change, racism, sexism, and myths of economic progress through the lens of my constant questioning of what it means – for me – to feel at “home.” I found myself searching for connections between these themes and how they shape the rapidly shifting modern world we live in. Finding meaning becomes challenging with the deafening clamour of social media in this age of fake news and algorithmically filtered conversations, but it feels important to try. When I stood back and looked at these songs altogether, patterns emerged – what had at first seemed like a disparate set of songs were all part of the same story.

The American writer Emily Dickinson once said that “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves” – like the starlings in a murmuration, where the movement of each individual bird is related to just seven of its closest neighbours, none of them aware of the mesmerising, fluctuating shapes being created by the flock. This album is my way of reaching out; to start a conversation that might form a small part of the larger pattern of a better future; a future we can all play an equal part in.

Emily Barker

https://www.emilybarker.com/video/

Review

The best singer/songwriters don’t waste note paper on writing meaningless, radio-targeted and mediocre songs. Rather, they relate their music intimately with their own lives, experiences and observations - good and bad. And they achieve this often with understated beauty that connects with a audience open to the message and music. Emily Barker is one of the finest in the current crop of female singer/songwriters, and her latest album covers all the desirable bases as well as being, arguably, her most personal statement yet. I would add to the above that of course voice and melody play crucial roles in cementing that audience connection. Barker has done it again right here. The first song epitomises my idea of a great singer/songwriter (and poet). ‘Return Me’ has it all: understated, gentle sweet vocal; strong melody, intelligent and accessible lyrics:

Return me to where my eyes first glimpsed
Sun-kissed folds of your Blackwood lips
I’ve been gone so long
Time is moving on

Come with me to another land
Our skin can thin together hand in hand
I’ve been gone so long
Tell me will you come?

The hues of your summer haunt my way
I feel the path we’ve known begin to stray

Chosen journey many selves ago
Turned to me with a mind of its own
Am I following?
Knowing where I’ve been?

I’ve loved this movement every coast to coast
Fell for others but I love you most
I’ve been gone so long
Tell me will you come?

The hues of your summer haunt my way
I feel the path we’ve known begin to stray

So come with me to another shore
We can learn a new way to mourn
Are you following?
Knowing where you’ve been?

This is also clever writing in that it could apply both to the country of her birth (Australia) or a lover (”Our skin can thin together hand in hand…”) or both. What’s clear is a sincere love for something missed and it’s very beautiful.