Emily Breeze celebrates flamboyant failure and confronts her age with her latest album ‘Rapture’
Bristol-based pop-noir artist Emily Breeze returns with the new album ‘Rapture’ via Sugar Shack Records. Written and recorded in her 40th year on planet Earth, the songs are a poignant and humorous take on how it feels to grow old disgracefully in an increasingly weird world.
She describes the album as a ‘collection of coming-of (middle) age stories which celebrate flamboyant failure, excess and acceptance.’
Reflecting on the inspiration behind the album, Emily states, “I was receiving advice from music industry types to try and hide my age as if it was a dirty secret like an STD or a disgraced royal, so I decided to do the exact opposite”.
Massive Attack’s Daddy G has recently teamed up with Emily on a club remix of her single ‘Confessions of an Ageing Party Girl’.
Cosmology is also a consistent theme which forms a backdrop to the everyday experiences (a day at work, a night in the pub) which take place as the universe unfurls into the great enveloping infinite dark. Many of the songs use cut-up excerpts from Science articles and quotes from cosmologists such as Carl Sagan which are spliced with Emily’s absurdist imagery “we will high-five the aliens, we will receive a standing ovation from the angels.”
The album’s centrepiece ‘Part of Me’ is a five-minute sprawling epic which takes on the alternative fates of the towering figures of the 21st century “Elvis moved to the suburbs for a witness protection scheme” and “Princess Diana went undercover; she works at Anne Summers she wears a disguise”.
These themes, images and ideas are beautifully illustrated through the talents of producer Stew Jackson (Massive Attack) and all-star band Rob Norbury (lead guitar), Andy Sutor (drums), Helen Stanley (keys/synth) and George Caveney (bass) who have collaborated with Emily to craft a cinematic pop-noir fantasy which draws influence from Vintage Exotica, Patti Smith, Pulp and Leonard Cohen.
Emily released her first solo album ‘The Penny Arcade’ in 2010 garnering critical acclaim including album of the year in Americana U.K and support from BBC Radio 6 which resulted in Emily being described as “The love child of P.J Harvey and Johnny Cash” in The Sunday Times, followed by performances at Glastonbury Festival, a headline slot at Bristol Festival and UK and European tour dates.
Emily and long-term collaborator Rob Norbury then went on to form psychedelic post-punk band Candy Darling and released two double A-side seven-inch singles ‘Money’ and ‘Going Straight’ which were supported by BBC Intro, The NME and Louder Than War. 2019 saw the release of Emily’s second solo album ‘Rituals’ produced by Stew Jackson (Massive Attack) which also received positive reviews in the national press (Mojo, Irish Times) and airplay from BBC Intro, XFM and BBC Radio 6.
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