EMILY BARKER Live AT TRUCK [OXFORD] 3rd MAY 2024 - Album Launch ‘FRAGILE AS HUMANS'

 

Emily at TRUCK on launch day of Fragile As Humans - Oxford 3rd May 2024

Well last night was a highpoint of the year for me and finally got to see Emily Barker at my nearest record Store (TRUCK) and it was simply wonderful. Emily has the most staggering vocal range from the quiet intimacies of the first song to the strength of later vocalising, her voice soars and staggers, tantalises and hovers on the highest strongest notes, her voice is perhaps her greatest gift possessed of crystal clear strength and clarity like a mountain stream (!) seriously she has the most extraordinary range and power to her voice yet you dismiss the quiet voice at your peril for its emotional depth and strength will knock you for six if not careful! (the listening party I am not ashamed to admit reduced me to tears twice!) Her guitar playing fascinates too and her taking a moment to adjust to open tuning is brave mid-set it seemed to me! But it is her writing that so fascinates us all I think, her poetic depth and increasingly expressive voice is given to exploring loss, loneliness and grief here but it is not once maudlin or melancholic. Truly an emotional intelligence exploring the depths of its feeling

ASIDE : Why a record ‘store’? I have to say I don’t really get it. This playing in record shop windows. Her fifth appearance here we think?! On the record launch day of her new album FRAGILE AS HUMANS she can appear in a record shop and to a ‘crowd’ of about 20 including yours truly and it occurs to me later this is open to the public so anyone wondering past can just come in and a couple did. Whilst queuing to get in at 5.30 a couple asked if they could get a coffee (Truck is known for its side game of coffee bar a later edition to a little record shop in the heart of Oxford’s multicultural heartland of the Cowley Road) Now I had bought the vinyl deluxe in advance and was waiting patiently to get my hands upon it and listen to her sing finally and then to have it signed I hoped! I assumed this was true of everyone there but it was just open to all so nobody actually pays to see her!? I counted 17 of us at the outset and increased to twenty plus from people passing by (sic) How do such things make the artist money!? I really don’t get it. Anymore. I know I am now very old but it troubles me. Not everyone there had even listened to the album live chat launch party via Bandcamp! 

Anyway I digress . . . . . 

Emily Barker

At Truck OXFORD (5th appearance there?!)

20+ people! 

Song list: as Emily points out this is the first time she has played any of these new tracks unaccompanied!  From memory these included :

With Small We Start 

Wild To Be Sharing This Moment  

Call it a Day

Feathered Thing 

Loneliness 

Fragile as Humans

  which song about first love, then her husband (Lukas0 and her beloved Dad x

Close: requests!

Nostalgia (of course perfect) 

Blackbird

Maybe ten songs in an hour plus a signing and meet n greet

She started with the quietist of songs from her new album

Opening song - With Small We Start

then

Wild To Be Sharing This Moment . . . . . . (it was!)

This next as Emily explained inspired by this:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

                                            from Emily Dickinson 

Emily is a published poet herself now and I await her latest volume which looks really good too! From Broken Sleep Books : Where The Black Swans Swim

here . . .

then the title track as she explained about three men in her life her childhood sweetheart, her husband (the wonderful Lukas Drinkwater) and her beloved Dad x

and of course finally this is where I came in watching dear Ken Branagh as Wallander Nostalgia (unaccompanied) it was later adapted and re-recorded by Emily with composer Marin Phipps for use as the theme to BBC TV crime drama what’s that 14 years ago!?  

I have everything now I think! and what with finally seeing her sing live for us, another bucket list ticked off the list . . . . . . . .  now I just need to see her with a backing band in concert! 

Nostalgia... 

Tram wires cross Melbourne skies 
Cut my red heart in two 
My knuckles bleed down Johnston street 
On a door that shouldn’t be in front of me 

Twelve thousand miles away from your smile 
I’m twelve thousand miles away from me 
Standing on the corner of Brunswick 
Got the rain coming down and mascara on my cheek 

Oh whisper me words in the shape of a bay 
Shelter my love from the wind and the rain 

Crow fly be my alibi 
And return this fable on your wing 
Take it far away to where gypsies play 
Beneath metal stars by the bridge 

Oh write me a beacon so I know the way 
Guide my love through night and through day 

Only the sunset knows my blind desire for the fleeting 
Only the moon understands the beauty of love 
When held by a hand like the aura of nostalgia

credits

released January 2, 2010

But she closed with 

BLACKBIRD from her first album Photos. Fires. Fables and here a live version with beloved husband producer, bass player, guitarist, singer, songwriter and all round renaissance man, Lukas Drinkwater!

Blackbird

from Photos​.​Fires​.​Fables.

I’ll leave it there but this was truly an extraordinary experience and I should balance it out with a ‘proper’ concert in the venues she is playing later next year somewhere like my favourite live haunt Union Chapel or hopefully somewhere nearer home. 

and she is also playing support to her old friend King Creosote

I have to add this did me in rather (i am sadly not as young as I was and no longer in my prime falling prey to a range of VERY boring conditions that will doubtless see me off!) and as I realise my health is not what it was, to stand for an hour despite kind souls in the crowd offering me a seat (sic!) I found myself  jigging along and even singing along ( I kid you not! Emily taught us a chorus to join in with!?!) I would have liked to have stayed to chat more if it was possible and didn’t really want to leave but a motorbike ride home in the rain some 8 miles was enough and I collapsed in a happy heap when I got home.

Glorious stuff and she was so kind and gracious and lovely to chat with however briefly! . . . . . . . 

New Album: yes and it is going to be amongst her very best, I would say top three (Dear River, Dark Murmuration of Words, and Sweet Kinda Blue) I had wanted to tell her that I listen to pretty much everything on a haphazard rotation basis but in terms of playlists found myself returning always to Dear River but then this was overtaken recently by Room 822 which she and Lukas recorded during lockdown waiting a fortnight’s clearance of the Covid  quarantine in a hotel when they first got ‘home’ to Oz. Now I think there is a new contender . . . . . . . 

FRAGILE AS HUMANS - buy it here . . .

Emily At TRUCK 3rd May 2024 - FRAGILE AS HUMANS launch day