Gowns' steaming debut, "Red State", was an audio book of baked personalities and narcotic-induced confusion strung out across a palette of freakish folk and droning feedback. With Erika M. Anderson, aka EMA, now going it alone, her new single, "Grey Ship" - backed by a sprawling, sixteen minute cover of Robert Johnson's "Kind Hearted Woman Blues" - sails over the horizon propelled by a similar wind. And although the dope levels may be lower, it's still all about the trip.
"Grey Ship", effectively an Anderson family saga in two parts, is a glorious blast of Norse mythology recounted by a guitar-slinging troubadour. Part one is all scratchy lo-fi drums and stripped, breathy vocals that reverberate ominously. Emerging out of cassette fuzz like a longboat out of the Norwegian fog, the fidelity drops half-way through as the bass picks up. An eerie, feverish maelstrom blows in, with sinuous violin, hammering guitar - which pounds the rhythm out like a baying drum-master - and buffeting percussion breaking against the speakers like roaring, spittle-flecked waves hitting the Barents coastline.
"Kind Heart", taking its cues from a slightly more modern period of history, is a staggeringly ballsy take on Johnson's classic. With meandering drones, a drifting, ebb-and-flow drawl, and a guitar that positively throbs, Anderson takes another trip, this time purportedly through the entire history of rock 'n' roll, "from birth to destruction". It's difficult to pinpoint all her layovers on the way, but suffice to say that destruction rides higher than creation on this one, and the track's collapse into feedback-drenched ruin is the least we should expect of a woman who has described tonal guitar feedback as "one of my all-time favourite sounds".
Anyone who can survive LA at eighteen has clearly got some gumption: those who know Gowns' often disquieting work will find much to enjoy in this at times menacing, at others furious, but always ambitious fusion of glowering tension, quasi-minimalist drone and feedback-soaked neo-folk(lore).
![Review - GREY SHIP/KIND HEART [SINGLE] - EMA - - Souterrain Transmissions -](/images/wh_logo.gif){kind=logo}
![EMA - GREY SHIP/KIND HEART [SINGLE]](/images/uploaded/reviews/greyshipki73201159241.jpg)
