Jukebox

Emma Rugg - Isolated Impression & Oceans/Depart

To coincide with Emma’s big US tour with Henry Doss, and her wonderful tour journal exclusive to our Guest Columns section, we’re going back to re-visit Emma’s music to date with her Isolated Impression album and Oceans/Depart EP, both on her own Indreams Records.

Following her six-month spell busking on the streets of Hull, a story that has reached semi-cult status, Emma recorded her debut album with the proceeds at Fairview Studios in 2004. The EP Oceans/Depart followed in 2005, along with several appearances on local BBC radio and TV in Northern England. Radio play caught the ear of American singer/songwriter Doss, who invited Emma to America to record with him on his own album. After the Directions Tour the pair are currently on, Emma will work on her first brand new material since the EP.

Isolated Impression

A completely acoustic solo effort, Emma covers her own backing vocal duties, and aside from some drums on Grand Designs and Prelude To The End, plays everything herself. The result is at times complex, at times simple, but always full of beautiful melody.

Across the firs three songs we see three different sides to Emma’s songwriting. Bright guitar melodies in opener As You Go belie a heartfelt sadness in the lyrics, where Emma’s vocals are serene and perfectly fitting, but don’t impress upon the listener the same mood as the words. Then the defiant Grand Design is one of the few tracks to no only use drums, as previously mentioned, but a chord-based melody. It’s also one of the less tear-jerking tracks as Emma sings of not changing herself to fit someone else’s plans. And thirdly Picture Perfect employs another exquisite, slow and down-beat melody, but happier lyrics (”I’ll cover grey sky with this smile of mine”) sung is wonderful harmony with herself through the choruses.

Emma’s most intricate guitar work so far kicks off Read Your Mind, creating melodies no less beautiful than her simpler ones. Her voice is similarly delicate, and the lyrics are not quite so emotionally wrought as other numbers, making it one of the happier songs. Much like As You Go, Prelude To The End uses jollier guitars, and this time some drums, to create one of Emma’s most ambitious arrangements, and the most driving track on the album. Definite single potential, and worthy of it’s inclusion on the following year’s EP as a bonus track.

Both To Love You and Today are a slower, delicate and wholly unhappy numbers. Opening Today lyric “I should be happy, but I’m not” starts things as they mean to go on, and “Make me feel bad to love you, when all I want to be is happy” in To Love You strikes a similar sentiment. To Love You is the more powerfully delivered of the two; Today striding firmly along the airy ballad route via Emma’s finest vocal performance of the CD.

Her most adventurous vocal arrangement however comes on the slow Floor 8, and it does rival Today for her best singing; another amazing track, frankly. Emma continues to show off her wonderful range with double-tracked vocal harmony on lonely lament If Walls Had Ears over a simple background solo guitar. Finally the rawest recording of the disc (string noise as she moves her fingers still intact), In Your Universe is a suitably intricate but sombre closer, summing up the record neatly. After several minutes of silence a two-minute piano instrumental brings the album to an end (could have done without the gap though, Emma!). A hint of things to come, Emma has mentioned on her website that she intends to work hard on new songs when she returns from the US tour, which will include a lot of piano music she’s been writing.

Overall it may sound like this album will be about as uplifting Thom Yorke and Morrissey dueting some of Coldplay’s dronings, but the music, the songs and Emma’s voice are so beautiful that the mood of some of the lyrics carry over the same emotions. Lyrically wonderful and musically accomplished Emma’s first emotional foray is nothing short of a complete success.

“ Lyrically wonderful and musically accomplished ”

File under: Acoustic singer/songwriter

Tracklist: As You Go / Grand Designs / Picture Perfect / Read Your Mind / Prelude To The End / To Love You / Today / Floor 8 / If Walls Had Ears / In Your Universe

Oceans/Depart

ep minisite

impulse buy

Following up Isolated Impression the next year, Emma recorded three brand new tracks for the Oceans/Depart EP. Expanding her sound and experimenting with arrangements, the three new songs step away from the sombre acoustic sound of Isolated Impression for a more upbeat feel.

Oceans, recorded at Fairview Studios again, is itself an acoustic guitar based song, with drums (provided by Alan Raw), like Grand Design on the album, but sees Emma deliver her most ambitious arrangement and quirkiest chorus melody to date. Slightly more “produced” than the Isolated Impression material, some additional keyboards from John Spence (co-producer of both Isolated Impression and Oceans with Emma), add an extra layer of ‘colour’ to an already fast paced (Emma’s fastest) and cheerful song.

The second a-side track, Depart was recorded at Frontier Studios in Copernish, MI, USA with John Beland co-producing and adding some additional guitar. Emma’s sound is expanded still further with drums (Roger Tarczon), keyboards (Al Jankowski) and cello (Cris Campbell), and begins in a similar vein to much of her album. Delicate and slow, the cello joins in half-way through the first verse to add grandeur before the drums and an extra guitar start to build up, then fade away again. The arrangements and interplay of the different instruments is something artists like Ray Lamontagne are currently becoming very popular for, and when the light electric guitar comes in towards the end and Emma’s singing becomes more powerful she starts to nudge the line just on the tasteful side of a power ballad without stepping across.

Last of the new tracks, and dangerously close to Avril Lavigne territory, When I Looked @ You, also recorded at Frontier in Copernish, uses electric guitars along with the acoustic for more of a rock sound; upbeat and optimistic, it’s more accomplished than anything the pint-sized Canadian pop princess can manage (anyone heard Girlfriend on the radio recently?)

Two bonus tracks round out the CD in a radio edit of Oceans, and Prelude To The End from Isolated Impression (the thing that’s lost the disc a star, to be honest - I like all new tracks on a CD!), making the EP the perfect place to start for anyone new to Emma’s music. It has a bit of everything she’s capable of, a remarkable variety of music, and should serve to leave the mouth watering for the full length disc and, anything new that’s to come.

Some brilliantly shot footage of one of her solo acoustic shows in Hull exists, some songs of which are downloadable from her site, and a DVD of this would be a superb stop-gap release before the new stuff, even it’s a home-made DVDR release, it would be welcomed with open wallets by the faithful. I think we just want more, however it comes.

“ remarkable variety of music ”

File under: Singer/songwriter

Tracklist: Oceans (Radio Edit) / Depart / When I Looked @ You / Prelude To The End / Oceans (Original Version)

Photo: Mark Pierce | www.markpierce-photography.co.uk

Written by Andy Lye - April 2007
Read more: Acoustic, Albums, Unsigned, Emma Rugg