Beauty Amid Pain Helps To Lift These Shadows
They Moved in Shadow All Together
Emily Jane White
Emily Jane White’s new album, ‘They Moved In Shadow All Together’ starts with the track ‘Frozen Garden’. It is a Cri de Coeur from someone who has been bruised and battered by love. She tells her lover how much he betrayed her but allows the possibility of reconciliation and a renewal of trust with the final words, ‘Someday I’ll Forgive’.
As well as the superb lyrics there is music that reminds me of the soundtrack to ‘The Wicker Man’, outwardly jaunty but hiding something dark inside.
The guitar on the second track ‘Pallid Eyes’ calls to mind the best of Ralph McTell with its subtlety and virtuosity. Lyrically it continues the theme of betrayal, ‘You’re so sweet, you cheat, so sweet’.
Despite the melancholic nature of the lyrics, this album never depresses the listener, entranced as you are by the ethereal beauty Of Emily Jane White’s voice.
As it swoops and falls the hairs stand up on your neck at times whilst at other times that voice seems to comfort you and wrap you up in an aural blanket as it does on the gorgeous ‘Nightmares on Repeat’.
Back to back tracks ‘Rupturing’ and ‘Moulding’ and ‘The Ledge’ take the album in to very dark places as the voice sheds some of its lightness to draw the listener in to haunting and unsettling stories of mortality and pain.
The penultimate track ‘Womankind’ takes on the misogyny of society with quiet but effective anger before the call to women to ‘Take your body back for you. In sacred flesh in sacred view’. It is a superbly written protest song all the more effective for refusing to give in to stridency.
The final track, ‘Behind the Glass’ asks ‘What is authenticity?’ before warning that ‘Behind the glass is something but it might not be what you’re wanting’. Authenticity is what Emily Jane White offers throughout this stunning album. Whilst it may be a difficult listen at times, behind this glass is something that will entrance you and ultimately, perhaps, make you more appreciative of your life and those in it.
