Emma-Lee Moss has a very appropriate stage name; she is indeed great. Bloody brilliant, actually, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
After releasing a series of EPs, touring with the likes of Martha Wainwright and Jamie T and playing apparently every festival under the sun, Emmy finally released her first album in early 2009, and has since been enjoying a reputation as one of the most raw and brutally honest artists performing in the British music scene today.
I have said before that I believe the key characteristic of folk music is that it is always played jam-full of heart and emotion, and there is no artist that fits this mould better than Emmy The Great. Her songs are all intensely personal, about heartbreak and the lives and deaths of friends. Her words ring true with hope, devastation and love, suiting her gentle tones perfectly, and the whole effect is one of absolute purity and grace.
Although all Emmy’s songs are slices of her own life, they also feature experiences to which we can all in some way relate. The feelings of anger and hurt we all feel after we suffer a break-up that we think we’ll never get over are summed up in the stunning ‘Canopies and Drapes’, whilst ‘Edward is Deadward’ is a song of extreme grief, and of not quite knowing what to do with yourself after losing someone you know you’re going to miss every single day (Both these tracks can be found on my favourite Emmy The Great EP, The Edward EP). Other experiences she recounts may be too specific and personal for us to share at all, but they can still move to the core; ‘MIA’, an account of a terrible car crash, had me close to tears the first time I listened, such is Emmy’s emotive power.
Moss fronts the group, plays acoustic guitar and writes all the songs, making the whole operation essentially her show, but no artist can function without their live band. Moss is fortunate to be supported by a whole string of fantastic musicians, including Euan Hinshelwood of Younghusband and Tom Rogerson of Three Trapped Tigers, both of whom played a key role in the production of Emmy’s debut album First Love. This means that the moving lyrics and soft, delicate vocals are backed up by an equally beautiful and often ethereal soundtrack that finishes the entire Emmy The Great sound wonderfully.
Emmy The Great is perhaps not someone to listen to if you’re feeling a bit down and depressed; you’ll be crying all over the place. However, if you want beauty, truth, purity and music that means something, really means something, then Emmy The Great is, well, great.
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