Emily Jane White - They Moved in Shadow All Together

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 3 / 7 / 2016

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Taken from the opening line from Cormac McCarthy’s novel 'Outer Dark' which hauntingly depicts a group of uncanny travellers descending a hill in the Appalachian mountains, 'They Moved in Shadow All Together' is the title of Emily Jane White’s fifth album. It is unleashed on the world via those lovely people at Talitres, who are responsible for putting out records by bands such as Motorama, the Callstore and Thousand, all of which we have previously reviewed at Pennyblack. This fifth offering was recorded at Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco, California, and also at New and Improved studio in Oakland, also in California. It was recorded over a two year timescale between December 2013 and September 2015. Emily Jane White is also from Oakland and is a musician, songwriter, and poet who began performing under her own name, Frances Marigold in 2003. before releasing under her new moniker her first album 'Dark Undercoat' in 2007. She followed it with 'Victorian America' (2007), 'Ode to Sentience' (2010), and Blood/Lines (2010), all of which have helped to accumulate her a strong following in Europe and North America. The eleven tracks on this album focus mainly on the theme of trauma. They deal with the impact of it, not just on an individual basis but also on a broader scale, and concentrate also on how we are left to cope after tragedy. White, for example, wrote 'The Black Dove' in support of the anti­racist struggle against police violence, and 'Womankind' to highlight the continuing epidemic of violence against women. It sounds like a combination of Bat for Lashes and Enya, and White's dark, haunting vocal has throughout a ghostly yet angelic quality. It is an album that has the singer maturing and discovering sides to her own voice that needed to come out. She studied classical singing while working on this album, which enabled her to broaden her vocal range and she experimented extensively in an echo chamber using the room as her instrument. All the backing vocals are hers. "I wanted to give a harmonizing quality to the fragmented pieces of self that result from trauma," she explains. "I wanted to give them life and make them beautiful and real while still occupying an intimately distant and eerie space.” Although White uses her own vocals as backing, she employed multi­instrumentalist Shawn Alpay to add some bass accompaniment which compliments her own guitar and piano. She also adds cello to the sound, giving a morose, sad inflection to the album. Nick Ott adds further drama to it with his helping of drums and percussion. It has a great silhouette photograph on the front accredited to Cyn M . Talitres has released some wonderful records over the years, and this is no exception.

Track Listing:-

1 Frozen Garden
2 Pallid Eyes
3 Hands
4 Nightmares on Repeat
5 Rupturing
6 Moulding
7 The Ledge
8 The Black Dove
9 Antechamber
10 Womankind
11 Behind the Glass

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/emilyjanewhiteofficial
http://www.emilyjanewhite.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Jane_White
http://www.bandsintown.com/EmilyJaneWhite
https://twitter.com/emilyjanewhite1

Label Links:-

http://www.talitres.com/en/
https://www.facebook.com/talitres.rds
https://twitter.com/talitres
https://instagram.com/talitres/

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