Song of the day – 341: EMA
This was a tip from Sean Adams.
It’s a nice tip. It all seems very emotional. This is a good thing, right? We like emotion here at Collapse Board, it signifies youth and passion and an inability not to take life seriously (I think that’s right), and a love for Cat Power records and Leonard Cohen compilations, and the odd sliver of hopelessness. I meant to write ‘saturation’ somewhere, but saturation is a given in our music in these times, isn’t it? Nothing is left to chance, not a breath of silence isn’t filled in and overpowered. It’s like the whole world grew up listening to the same music Times New Viking grew up listening to … oh wait, they’re a pop band aren’t they? I mean, Amps For Christ of course. Every morning, just to wake myself up and remind myself I’m alive, I like to stare into the abyss. I remember Mia Clarke from Electrelane once telling me she felt that she and I were the only two people who understood that we could fall off this earth at any moment … but that was Mia for you.
This song stands out a golden mile from the others on EMA’s debut Past Life Martyred Saints album: perhaps familiarity, perhaps because the volume seems to have been turned up several notches, perhaps because the inclemency in here suddenly seems unbearable. I’m in two minds about her self-satisfaction – or perhaps tentative assertion – in the video below.
Erika M Anderson (EMA) used to play oscillators in Amps For Christ and was the singer with the Christ-almighty Gowns. I guess some folk do what others of us don’t even dream exist.