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Review: 'LOUISE, EMMA'
'Vs HEAD Vs HEART'   

-  Label: 'Self Released'
-  Genre: 'Pop' -  Release Date: '3rd March 2015'

Our Rating:
It seems to me that modern women in pop music - who I would broadly define as those who grew up listening to Madonna - are torn between the classic feminist ideals of liberation and the need for protection or reassurance from men. So, while on the one hand they may assert the right to make their own choices, they also wrestle with the paradoxical notion that their personality is somehow defined by a perfect loving relationship.

Emma Louise is a young singer who fits into the mould established by artists like Sia or Lana Del Rey. As she writes on her website album commentary, “Feeling threatened by other people outside of a relationship is a real and rotten side of love.”

She was born in 1993 in Townsville on the coast of Queensland, and refers to her upbringing as a 'gypsy life' since her parents had a passion for doing up old houses them moving on to the next. Only when she moved to Brisbane did she establish some greater stability.

Louise names fellow Australian Missy Higgins as one of her major influences and, significantly, a popular song of that singer ('Where I Stood') includes the line “I don’t know who I am without you” .

Louise, it seems to me, addresses a similar crisis of identity even though her songs are as much about finding herself as finding Mr. Right. It is revealing that love is frequently tied (pun intended!) to images of constraint. Two titles, for example, are Braces and Cages (although it should be noted that the latter is about finding a new home for her pet parrot!)

Her craving for love (sex?) is strong but this fundamental human need is constantly pitched against a desire to affirm her worth on her own terms and does not need a man to complete her. However, the line "When you're gone, I'm dust" on the closing track To Keep Me Warm indicates that she has still some way to go before being altogether comfortable with this degree of autonomy!

The rawness of psychological anguish and the associated risks of dependency are strong themes. These can be found in the imagery of claws and "dragons" in Mirrors or in a song like Stainache which takes its title from a portmanteau of the words stain and heartache.

And all this is brilliantly condensed into Jungle which has already become a massive hit across Europe. It is a song which has spawned numerous DJ remixes and received the dubious commercial accolade of being used in a TV ad for Yves Saint Laurent's Black Opium perfume.

'Jungle' works by pressing all the right Fifty Shades of Grey buttons in that it equates love with pain. Apart from references to '"aching" and "hurting", it begins with the line "In a dark room we fight". All this could be viewed as manipulative although in its raw form the song seems to come from a genuine state of confusion.

The age-old dilemma as to whether we should be ruled by the head or the heart certainly provides a fertile ground for great pop music. Another song written on the same night as 'Jungle', and apparently based on the same personal experience, is Pontoon. This repeats the singer's expressions of emotional vulnerability ("I feel foolish, like a child") in response to the "fire" of male anger and once more there are strong hints of violence or abuse: "I'm ready for disaster, I see you standing over me".

After this, Freedom comes as something of a relief since, as the title suggests, it is free of the burden all such oppressive experience. This is a bright lights, big city party tune with a heady sense of life in motion but, even here, "we're living, oh, we are living" might be construed as insecurity in that this could be regarded as a cry of 'I exist, yes, I exist'.

Boy is another radio-friendly song and I can't improve on Louise's own summary of its subject matter: "Boy is a song about subtle, stinted frustration directed at a person who smokes too much of the green grass and doesn’t help himself in moving forward".

Emma Louise's press pack makes a big play of the fact that she is a wise head on young shoulders and a song like 17 Hours, capturing a jet-lagged state of turmoil, illustrates that she has already mastered the art of mixing direct personal experience with more abstract thoughts.

Having a huge success with a break out single has skewed many a fledging musical career before but the strength of the songs of this debut album suggest that Emma Louise has the talent and maturity to be more than just a one-hit wonder.



Emma Louise's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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LOUISE, EMMA - Vs HEAD Vs HEART