Emma Scarr
Album: Dusty Words & Motorways
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.myspace.com/emmascarr

I reviewed Emma's assured debut Angel Way back in 2009, finding it a delightful, highly individual variant of urban-folk, a decidedly backporch-London take on the approved singer-troubadour model but with some ace playing (guitar, fiddle, banjo) to boot. If anything, Emma's folk-busker directness is even more a feature of that album's followup, which delivers a further appealing collection of self-penned songs.

Her upfront, slightly raw, plain-spoken vocal expressiveness communicates right away, and proves absolutely right for the material; she sings unsentimentally and powerfully of often highly personal experiences and their special, intimate place-driven resonances, yet without displaying a trace of self-pity or undue exclusivity. For there's a defiance and independence rooted within Emma's apparent sanguine outlook. Her writing tends to focus on the simultaneous appeal of, and intrinsic conflict between, the deep longing for excitement and adventure and the equivalent gravitational pull of the everyday, comfortably known world. This central paradox is expressed in wistful language that exhibits a special kind of timeless Englishness yet betrays as many influences drawn from (or more familiar to) the Americana genre, not least in the core sound and instrumentation employed. And arguably nowhere better is the above paradox expressed than in the conversational wishful-dreaming of Midnight In Alberta (hard to imagine anywhere more remote from Leytonstone!).

The album ends perhaps a touch uncharacteristically folkily, with Emma relating the tale of the Martyrs (Home To Tolpuddle), but between those two points Emma takes us crusin' down the M4 all the way to Avon County (To The West), into the past (the parlour-piano and double bass melancholy of Diaries, delivered almost sotto voce to compelling effect) and the realms of wishful fantasy (A Folk Singer's Dream), tinged with acute realisation and realism (Not For Me) and interspersed with perplexed reminiscing and regretting (East Of England), twisted childhood-balladry (Don't Go To The Funfair Son, which sports some wonderfully delirious electric guitar embellishment), and even a touch of observational humour (Annie's Tattoo) along the way.

Emma's creations display an enviable grasp of the songwriter's craft, and her unique life-vision comes together most convincingly on the Dusty Words And Motorways of her musical creativity.

David Kidman