Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
09/10/2011
Walking on stage at the Brudenell Social Club last Sunday night, Emma Lee Moss cut an impressive figure. Tall and slim, with her hair piled high upon her head, she picked up her guitar. For the first 15 minutes or so, she sang beautifully but barely spoke, a silence which could have been mistaken for arrogance. Thankfully, the distance between her and us grew ever smaller as she engaged with the crowd, proving herself to be natural, articulate and warm. She improvised, took requests and at one point even invited everyone in the room to join her friend circle on Google+.
While it was a little disappointing to see her initially so detached (we love her!!!), on reflection the contrast of character seems totally appropriate in the context of her work. Underneath her lovely melodies and pretty exterior, she often shows herself to be deliciously harsh, wonderfully demonstrated on Sunday in ‘24’ – “I would marry you for money, but I don’t suppose you’ll ever have enough”. At the same time as writing brutal lyrics about life, death and manipulation, she sometimes proves that she does have a heart with feelings after all, as in ‘Paper Forest (In the Afterglow of Rapture)’ – ‘And these fears they will unravel me one day/ But still I am afraid’.
But Emmy the Great isn’t all about its namesake. The leading lady has been known to play with a variety of different musicians, and what was particularly nice to see here was what appeared to be real friendship and collaboration, in that both support acts were valuable members of the headline act too. Ric Hollingbery of Pengilly’s, who has been around these parts at least since we first saw Emmy the Great at a 2008 in-store show, played the bass, and Grace Banks, a charming solo artist in her own right, joined in with keyboards and backing vocals. Band morale seemed high, especially during the spontaneous hoedown initiated to alleviate the tension of ‘M.I.A.’, a song that features a car-crash date, quite literally.
‘M.I.A.’ and ‘First Love’ were the anomalies in a set list which stayed more or less faithful to the order of the album it was promoting, Virtue (buy it!!!). The oldies were brought out in the three-song encore, made up of requests from the crowd. ‘Canopies and Drapes’ and ‘24’ sounded subtly different to how we knew them – perhaps because they no longer reflect the emotions that preoccupy her, in comparison with the painfully raw ‘Trellick Tower’, which deals with her recent split from her pious fiancé (fool!!!).
The encore finished with a rethinking of ‘We Almost Had a Baby’, a track from their first album, First Love. Slowed down to a ‘Blue Moon’-style 1950s ballad, the potential for mushiness was counteracted by Emma’s honest, biting lyrics and untraditional take on pregnancy – “Once I tried to make a life/To keep myself in yours”. Her character takes control of a situation that often strips women of their agency and takes revenge on the man who “didn’t stop when [she] told [him] to stop”.
All in all, Emmy the Great is a truly magnificent band with a front-woman strong and independent enough to rival Beyoncé Knowles (et. al). If you can catch her before the end of her tour, do. Honestly.
Ruth Finegold and Georgia Newman
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phorque/
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