Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Observation is the key to capturing the essence of the soul. You can find beauty in anything, but if you don’t truly look with more than just your eyes, if you don’t feel with more than just your heart, then what you observe is no more than a snapshot of a single emotion caught in the moment. Observation is key, but you must be prepared to see it through a kaleidoscope and not just a glimpse of a polaroid waved in front of you by a well-meaning, but ultimately over excitable friend.
Enjoy Life While You Can, a mantra most certainly for our times, but one that silently suggests that we must also look to the larger picture, to see the harvest as not just the scything of the wheat and the inevitable slice of toast on the table, but as the whole process, from planning through to sowing, from field husbandry to the thankfulness we feel for all that comes in between coming to a fulfilment to be able to eat and share our good fortune.
It is the pastures of lyrical abundance that the harvest is keenly felt, and as songs from Emma Gale such as the opener Let’s See What The Earth Has To Say, Tonight’s The Night, Love Got The Better Of Me, Meet You By The Bridge, and Enjoy Your Life While You Can, that harvest is appreciated to its fullest, for as the listener comes to learn what has bought Ms. Gale to the point of reveal, so the more they understand the varied Americana feel is one who has undergone the full seasons in her approach, in her artistry.
This is not an album derived by accident, this is a baring of a soul that has shed time, that has grasped the pulse of its existence, and seen the changing colours and the growth in the fields with their own eyes. A recording that encompasses critical nostalgia, even the persuasive power of melancholy in all its gathering enchantment, Emma Gale lays the self-titled debut album down with generosity, with observance, and with a soul, with all senses buzzing, for having seen Time as a linear belief rather than just a final single picture.
Emma Gale’s album bares its fruit in a timely and creative manner, an album that does her name proud.
Emma Gale releases her self-titled debut album on Friday 18th March on Example Records.
Ian D. Hall