This third full-length album was recorded in Chicago by Steve Albini during December 2004. Chris Saligoe (RACEBANNON, RAPIDER THAN HORSEPOWER) added guitar and Jason Kourkounis (MULE, DELTA 72) played some (most?) of the wonderfully aggressive drums. Emma Louise herself seems to get involved in both departments, along with her free form faux-naïve singing.
I say "faux-naïve" as if there was something wrong with that. I don’t mean it that way. She spills out a childlike emotional intensity in a way that has nothing at all to do with little girl precocity. Niblett is a serious performing artist who has been up on stages for at least eight years – from Nottingham Art School days in England to her Oakland California relocation and current US tour. The persona is all immediacy and me me me. But it’s powerfully focussed and artfully constructed. "I'll make my fucking noise" she shouts in final blues tune "Where Are You?", trademark blonde wig ready for the camera angle. And she sounds like she means it.
Albini's minimal engineering approach makes the sound as uncompromising and hard edged as you would imagine. But Niblett's artistry goes through a range from delicacy and whispers to full on yelling pounding and clanging. The shifts and contrasts are as much a part of the album as the themes and the stories. They are not things to be endured before the art can be enjoyed, they are a joyous and enthusiastic part of the whole deal.
Listening demands some letting go. There's not much scope for whistling along or reading Plan B while "Kidnapped by Neptune" is on the stereo. But do let go ... she has a lot more to offer than art school outsider ID credentials.
"Lullaby for Scout in Ten Years"" at track 5 does a lot of what the album is about. 8 bar bass line into, and a vocal moaning oh whoa oh for another 8 as a rim tap puts some edgy funk into the proceedings. Then some lightly fingered octaves on the guitar following the tune of the oh whoa oh. Then the verse. Very precise, clearly enunciated. "Are you still a chauffeur? Driving your body around? Are you still a hunter for your sound?" This is the artist singing to herself, almost painfully self absorbed, And then there's a huge blast of guitar that purges the whole thing ready for a return to the same themes, but this time sung with more bravado and confidence. It’s as if she's using the song to exorcise her own demons. Being an artist, of course, she's doing no such thing (not since December when she recorded it, anyway). She's letting us sort out our own.
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Self confidence, self awareness, the need for support and validation: these are the subjects of the fifteen songs (Pom Poms dices beautifully with the pain of self doubt). Strong-minded vulnerability, a need to share ambiguous emotions and get a ripple (preferably a storm) of emotional response seem to be the motivations.
The recordings separate the percussion, guitar and voice in time as well as space. We get solo drumming, unaccompanied voice, isolated guitar, all operating on some kind of call-response pattern. "Valvoline" alternates voice and drums – only overlapping at the very edges. "Safety Pants" starts with the neon rock scream: "Hey Instrument of Death: sing to me once again!" then drops the instruments altogether, leaving one repeated yearning line to insinuate along to some desultory handclaps and incremental drums that express so much for being so exposed. There are some brief harmony lines added too, that really tingle by reminding us of how lonely the general approach has been. "Good to me" has a blister-shredding guitar/drums wig out to clear the air, then Scout gets thick voiced and sultry with more cautious instrumental offerings. This is the pattern. Stops, starts, and regular demands for new levels of listener attentiveness.
We also have a classically halting piano part on "This City", with a very large drum pattern that has been beautifully recorded. The song itself has a French chanson feel. Marvelous.
You know, I like this album a lot. I like the minimalism and I realise that I could spend the rest of the week describing all the neat and perfectly considered parts that make it up. I'd say: go and buy it and spend some time with it. The singles that have come W&H's way to date start to make a lot more sense.
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