Amelia’s Magazine | First Love – Emmy the Great

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Monday 19th January

Greg Dulli/Mark Lanegan, viagra sale information pills Union Chapel, cialis 40mg London

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For fans of the drug-n-whisky soaked darker side of life this intimate venue should be the perfect place to catch the full intensity of this bad boy duo’s melancholic rumblings.

Still Flyin’, patient Stricken City, We Have Band, Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, London

15-piece Californian band/orchestra/whatever headline with their sunny but diverse indie pop. Plus cool electro pop from We Have Band.

Tuesday 20th January

Kasms, White Heat, London

Noisy and shambolic guitar sounds from these metal-tinged black-haired Londoners.

Wednesday 21st January

Wire, Cargo, London

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Sometimes gigs from old favourites can be a risky business, often liable to disappoint when your heroes have become sad old has-beens. With any luck these late 70s punk stalwarts were too cool to age badly and this should be a great gig.

Little Joy, Dingwalls, London

Strokes drummer Fab Moretti becomes a front man on this side project. Expect New Yorkey, indie-pop in a similar vein to, um, The Strokes via Brazil.

Thursday 22nd January

La Roux, Cockpit, Leeds

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She’s in Issue 10 so she must be pretty good but don’t just take our (and every other music journalist in England’s) word for it. Check out her fun dance pop live.

Friday 23rd January

Sky Larkin, Barfly, Cardiff

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Cute but clever indie rock from Leeds with a definite off-beat edge.

David Grubbs, The Croft, Bristol

Once the founder of 80s punk metallers Squirrel Bait, David Grubbs now plays grungy post-rock as a solo concern.

Saturday 24th January

James Yuill, The Macbeth, London

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Think Jose Gonzalez without the advert but with plenty of electronic sounds to accompany the quiet and introspective acoustic numbers.

Of Montreal, Digital, Brighton

Much loved indie pop, spreading a little happiness whilst supporting Franz Ferdinand on their latest tour.

Sunday 25th January

Le Corps Mince de Francoise, Library, Lancaster

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Daft Finnish pop in the same vein as CSS, Chicks on Speed and others of that ilk. Crazy make up and fun party girls = a great end to the weekend.

Rows of fish heads preserved in salt – even in the quirky world of Tatty Devine, viagra 60mg that’s an unexpected sight. They peer out from a long black board mounted on the gallery wall like hunting trophies. Next to them, buy cast copies of ripe oranges burrow into blocks of dark red velvet, rx as if victims of a bloody fruit massacre.

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This is the first solo show of sculptor Amaia Allende, which opened on Thursday at the Tatty Devine boutique and gallery space in Brick Lane, east London. Allende claims to tackle the “subject of belonging” by assembling similar everyday items into tidy rows. It looks suspiciously like she has emptied her kitchen bin around the shop.

By the front door, some sort of green pear-like fruits line up on a narrow shelf. Poking out of the top are long strands of polyester blond hair, which make them look like a family of Mrs Pear Heads. So they belong together, you see, while at the same time having individual personalities (because of the hair).

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Tatty Devine is famous for its unique jewellery and edgy art exhibitions, including “Jane Amongst the Birds”, a competition for the best foreign bird or budgie (complete with Tatty Devine trophy) held in September last year. So when it comes to belonging, it seems that Allende and her sombre line-up of fish heads and old fruit, have found an appropriate home.
The most glamorous way of recycling clothes is buying vintage. Last week atelier-mayer.com was launched by luxury fashion PR, viagra order Carmen Haid, about it and fashion journalist, Alice Kodell, and it is a literal vintage heaven. It’s not the place to go if your vintage needs are met by Beyond Retro but if you want a designer dress to suit your decadent palette, you’ll love it.

In the 1930′s Carmen Haid’s grandmother, Klaudia Mayer ran a haute couture atelier in Vienna, selling exquisite clothes sourced from all over the world and it is this that atelier-mayer.com recreates as an online boutique.

The launch truly indicated the splendour of the site, as we entered Marks Club – gentlemen’s club extraordinaire – in Mayfair, we were greeted with roaring fireplaces, country estate décor and the elegant melodies of the violinists could be heard wafting down the staircase.

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Photograph by Tilly Pearman

Such a grand setting was fitting for the designer and couture gowns on show, a taste of what can be bought on the site. As well as on rails, the clothes were worn by models and the violinists, to show off the true beauty of them.

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Photographs by Tilly Pearman

The site not only allows you to browse through the clothes online, the style me section acts as your very own personal shopper, taking into account your size and preferences and finding appropriate pieces and accessories for you.

Atelier-mayer.com is also a great source for brushing up on your fashion knowledge, it has biographies of designers and fashion houses, guides to buying vintage and the style minute section contains a collection of fashion videos, including a fabulous Audrey Hepburn montage and an interview with key sartorial players including Coco Chanel, which is in her native French but we (Prudence Ivey – bilingual Music Editor) has done a handy translation of the key questions for you:

Could you give me a definition of elegance?
Coco: It’s difficult, you ask a difficult question, what is elegance? It’s many things. I will say something which I repeat all the time that for me is obvious but which many people don’t understand: that you can never be elegant enough.

Many of the dresses you designed last year have been copied or imitated in practically every country in the world. The Chanel style has descended to the street. Are you happy about this?
Coco: I am delighted. That was my goal. I don’t believe in defending fashion. You can’t have fashion if you are against imitation. There is no fashion if no-one sees it. Not me but many of the couturiers have an insane fear of imitation but you can’t be successful without it. For me success is the copy. You can’t be successful without that and imitation.

Wise words Coco.

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photograph from Gavin Cullen

I should confess that I don’t come to First Love with impartial ears, information pills but more as an inadvertent geek, verging-on-groupie, who has faithfully been following the movements of Emma-Lee Moss since first stumbling across the girl who sang out prophecies of premature death and the difficulty in distinguishing between love and a stomach disorder. Assembling whoever I could, I stood among many a rowdy crowd turned to enchanted silence – the boys would always fall in love and the girls would come away a little jealous.

Now her album has appeared on our desk and I am all excitement and nerves. The name is taken from Samuel Beckett’s depressing novella about a violently misogynistic lover, whilst Emmy’s First Love is a “hard-won innocence-to-experience saga about a destructive but ultimately character forming relationship, in which songwriting process was her final act of catharsis”. But the tracks that most explicitly fit this bill are the ones I find hardest to warm to, stripped of the subtlety and delicacy of earlier songs, they can be a little sour to the taste. For the most part however, the album shines with all the appeal that makes Emmy great. Lyrics that are dark, humorous and full of brilliantly evocative imagery – all veiled beneath teasingly playful melodies and a disarmingly sugared deliverance – “Our guitarist Euan says our songs are passive aggressive – people think we’re harmless unless they’re really listening”.

We went along to 12 Bar to see her play an acoustic set of before an intimidating crowd of straight clothed industry folk, though she was unfazed, always confident, “we’re used to much bigger stages” she joked …. and so Emmy the Great enters into the mainstream, and perhaps it is just the natural preconditioning of any fan but I think I preferred her on intimate stages when it was just her, her guitar, and a pool of admirers. Saying that, ‘We are Safe” is my new favourite song, full band.

Categories ,12 Bar Club, ,Acoustic, ,Album, ,Emma-Lee Moss, ,Emmy the Great, ,First Love, ,Live, ,Singer

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Amelia’s Magazine | Album Review – Emmy the Great: Virtue

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Emmy the Great by Soni Speight.

I’ve been a fan of Emma-Lee Moss for oh so long. And she hasn’t failed me yet.

emmy the great by gabrielle brittney
Emmy the Great by Gabrielle Brittney.

Emmy The Great by Lea Rimoux
Emmy The Great by Lea Rimoux.

Virtue opens with the scratchy sounds of an orchestra tuning up in the oddly titled Dinosaur Sex… it’s a slow and understated start to Emmy’s latest album. When her voice appears it is at its lightest delicate best, clinic gradually curling into a delicate tune about the perils of a modern day life spent in front of a computer screen. Presumably the Dinosaur Sex of the title refers to an outmoded form of human contact.

Emmy The Great - Jo Chambers
Emmy The Great by Jo Chambers.

By Woman, unhealthy a Woman, erectile A Century of Sleep Emmy has gained a stronger voice to tell us a tale of domestic slavery, to ‘sew a dress till the pieces mesh’. She has such a marvellous way with words, but what’s so gorgeous about Virtue is the way she has also embraced a fuller sound to accompany her ever clever lyrics. Current single Iris is an early high, a driving drumbeat accompanying the simple chords and twinkling synth which drift slowly into this new bigger sound. I reviewed Iris a few weeks ago.

Emmy the Great by Avril Kelly
Emmy the Great by Avril Kelly.

Paper Forest (in the Afterglow of Rapture) reveals in crystal clear high notes the aftermath of the relationship she lost to the church. Cassandra is a simple track that calls to mind the Emmy of before.

Emmy the Great by Sam Parr
Emmy the Great by Sam Parr.

Creation starts with dreary minor chords, then reverts to a more upbeat major sound, swinging between the two as ‘she wants to know if there is a narrative’ for ‘she needs a reason for believing’. The dips and turns of the music echo the natural paths of any relationship. Sylvia has a driving disco backbeat, even as it explores stormy emotions: ‘if this is life then why does it feel like I am far away… like I am dreaming.’

Emmy The Great by Giles Mead
Emmy The Great by Giles Mead.

Emmy The Great by Rukmunal Hakim
Emmy The Great by Rukmunal Hakim.

Exit Night/Juliet’s Theme heralds a familiar Emmy type melody of yore, exploring notions of fairy tales, ghosts and other worlds where different worlds exist. In North Emmy is led by the needle, presumably on the record player. Trellick Tower is a song about the days when she was alone in West London, recently un-engaged and single once again. It’s a very small song compared with the others, with just a piano for company, leaving room for Emmy’s voice to meander into the ether.

Emmy-The-Great-by-Abi-Heyneke
Emmy The Great by Abi Heyneke.

Virtue remains true to Emmy’s very personal existential wanderings, but with added intrigue and oomph supplied by experimental musical accompaniments that go well beyond her original folk noodlings. What’s so wonderful is that her lyrics can be perceived in so many different ways – above are my personal interpretations but for Emmy’s explanations visit this track by track rundown on the Guardian website.

Emmy-the-Great-by-Victoria-Haynes
Emmy the Great by Victoria Haynes.

Lovely Emmy is flying up the charts with Virture and with good reason – she just keeps getting better and better. Virtue is out now on Close Harbour Records. You’d best catch her on tour soon.

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Categories ,Abi Heyneke, ,album, ,Avril Kelly, ,Close Harbour Records, ,Emma-Lee Moss, ,Emmy the Great, ,Gabrielle Brittney, ,Giles Mead, ,Ickleson, ,Iris, ,Jo Chambers, ,Lea Rimoux, ,review, ,Rukmunal Hakim, ,Sam Parr, ,Soni Speight, ,Victoria Haynes, ,Virtue

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