Review: Emmy The Great @ Clwb
Swn Presents Emmy The Great
Clwb Ifor Bach
13th October 2011
Two things struck me about London based Emma-Lee Moss.
The first was that she looked completely stunning. Her long, dark hair and deep, serious gaze gave off a melancholic beauty which was transformed by her radiant smile.
Secondly, she sounded completely gorgeous. Each note was effortlessly caressed by her melt in your mouth vocals which would stop a train in its tracks. However, with her band in tow, I feel Emmy the Great has never quite been a complete, fully formed artist and her gig last night at Clwb left me feeling better for going but not entirely satisfied.
The issue I have with Emmy the Great is not that she lacks talent - her varied use of many guitars and aforementioned vocals showing this - but that her particular brand of indie-folk just doesn’t jump out as especially memorable. And, in an area of the music industry dominated by the likes of Laura Marling and Florence Welch, you have to have that something special to compete, never mind excel. My problem with Emmy lies not with her ability to write good sounding music, but is because more often than not, I can’t make head-nor-tail of her lyrics. Now, let’s be fair, I may not be the target audience for her musings - most of the Clwb audience were post-adolescence and female, and few were hormonal, teenage boys (although my mates made up the numbers) - and for the most part, to quote The Smiths, her songs “said nothing to me about my life”. I think this is the root of my dissatisfaction.
Ignoring this she was rather good and showed much promise as a performer. The set’s highlights - Paper Forest, We Almost Had a Baby, Dinosaur Sex, and First Love - demonstrated singer-songwriter stuff at its most alluring. She had a somewhat awkward but warm stage presence - conversations drifting from her lack of underwear on the twenty-something date of her tour, to whom she would move in with when she ‘inevitably’ moved to Cardiff. She even showed a dislike towards rugby which didn’t go down too well.
I did enjoy the show but failed to fully ‘get’ this artist. As I say, Emmy the Great has all the makings of a star - the look, the voice and glimpses of brilliant song writing - but I’m afraid it will take much more if she is to live up to her name.
Organisations Community Music Wales
Info Sport & Leisure Performing Arts Music
IMAGE: IMG_1195.JPG by By Miss Lady Lee
