Emmy the Great
April
Release Date: Oct 9, 2020
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Bella Union
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Album Review: April by Emmy the Great
Great, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
Recorded in a two-week burst in 2018 and stowed away while she took a year's maternity leave, 'April / 月音' is something of a time capsule marking Emmy The Great's travels to her birthplace of Hong Kong. These chronicles surface in an ethereal, dream-like fashion across the LP's 10 tracks illustrated with singing bowls, prayer bells and Buddhist percussion picked up on her way. The lyrics reverberate with the doe-eyed language often employed in folk tales - "you once told me about the moon, and the first men who walked on her… they were searching for a Chinese queen" - but often withhold some grip on reality making them all the more the more whimsical; "couple of salesmen trying to shift themselves from this dream".
Based on rating 7/10
Emmy the Great's fourth solo album, April, was heavily influenced by a trip to her childhood home of Hong Kong during Mid-Autumn Festival in 2017. Though working on an album was part of her plan for the time off, she also explored the city streets and felt an unexpected connection to its ongoing issues with identity, and to her native Cantonese. (Her family moved from Hong Kong to the U.K.
Based on rating 7
Emmy The Great, AKA Emma-Lee Moss, needs no introduction, yet I'll give her one. In a nutshell she's, well, great. Her previous three albums are filled with the kind of heartache and acceptance that is hard to ignore. Her new album 'April / 月音' is another strong addition to one of the finest back catalogues in last 15 years.
'April'
is available now