by Alistair Fitchett, excerpt from "Young and Foolish" (Stride Books)

Take Emily. Purveyors of sometimes ethereal genius with moments that can grow wings and fly, or grow horns and

charge, depending on their mood / mode. A percussive assault that often puts me in mind of Big Star's magisterial

'You Can't Have Me' with its runaway optimistic negativity, can switch abruptly into cathedral reverberation, as Emily

become immersed in their effervescing style, an iridescent arc of sparkler fiery kisses on the heavens. The former

mood / mode often makes me think of Ollie Jackson as some sort of Soul brother to Tony France, and I see / hear

Emily metamorphose their brass backed masterworks into Stockholm Monstrous swirls of breathtaking intensity. The

latter mode / mood puts me in mind of some Scott Walker figure, with Emily swelling with strings and orchestral

woodwind into epic proportions, again snatching my breath away, just so.                                               

Also, it's the manner in which a song like 'Stumble' can respond to both such treatments, can ebb and flow, swell and

subside with such immense majesty that it makes me bracket it in some sort of ultimately irrelevant manner with my

most revered pop/rock moments. The Jasmine Minks' 'Cry For A Man', The Velvet Underground's 'Heroin', the Byrds'

'Eight Miles High' or Hurrah!'s 'Celtic'. 'Stumble' is  the Emily version of Handle's 'Messiah'. Better watch your heads.

Or Boxing Day blues with that soft whispering beginning and the glorious moment when the clarinet first breathes into

the song, giving a glow of warmth to its cool clarity. From the hearstopping darkness of the line "there's a vagueness

in here, but it's rooted in fear, that I might become one of the horror stories of the year" to the bared openness of

"I would not change because the core is what you already see", this song both draws life out and breathes life in..

Then the EP closing Rachel, up but down, the paradox of life/love. A refreshing breeze blows light and everything

skips with a sad but true retrospective glance over the shoulder at the end of love. Which itself ends, after the

meltingly weightless "what I have to say, will have to wait" with a resignedly sighed "I never knew how long it

would take to get over you" which rides on the back of those minor percussive miracles, dissolving into the sky. 

With such moments Emily have already touched the moon.  Next watch them kiss the stars.