Emma Jane
Album: Silver Streets
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 5
Website: http://www.emmajaneofficial.com

Emma Jane is an artist that I've followed since being lucky enough to hear her very early material as a singer songwriter taking her first tentative steps into the twin worlds of singer-songwriting and Americana and being instantly impressed with her country love song, "Carter Cash", using the relationship between two of her great heroes as a metaphor.

I've been lucky enough to listen to her bloom into one of the finest writers and performers amongst the Americana scene both in her native Scotland and more recently London and other areas in the UK. Her full blown album of last year, "Penilee Songs" became our album of the year, as well as garnering significant play on specialist shows on local and internet radio, so naturally when "Silver Streets" came into the office its route to the cd player was a very quick one.

If you can find a voice more suited to sultry country blues then please let me know because the marriage of Emma Jane's voice and her songs is one that is as sweet as honeydew and at times just as dangerous as you end up enchanted and then ensnared.

There's a line on the album, "I never troubled trouble, until trouble started troubling me." It's one that more than hints at the focal point of this mini album. If it wasn't for the fact that it was written a couple of decades before Emma Jane was born, you could almost believe that "Devil In Disguise", you could find yourself believing that it was written as a tribute song for this album.

This is hardcore torch country, the type that leaves very few survivors, the title track "Silver Streets" is the sort of song that could rip tears from the statue of a saint, it has a lonesome, heartbreaking touch that could reach even the heart of George Osborne, regardless of which cryogenic chamber he's left it in this week.

The old Gypsy Rose Lee adage of leave them begging for more applies by the bucketload on "Silver Streets", it is undoubtedly too short, but it's only one press of a button to take you back to the start. This one really should be a pride of your collection and pride is just another sin.

Neil King