Christchurch in the early to mid 1980’s, and like they all must do, the family dog dies.Gordon may be gone, but Emily is still here. She’s 6 and she’s going to write a song.
Thirty odd years on and Emily Fairlight hasn’t strayed terribly far from the dark artistic path she chose while Gordon was finding his way over the rainbow bridge.
The young Emily’s first taste of music came through the Baptist Church, though an uncle was the only real musician in the family. She’d attend his band practices banging a tamborine and singing along. This just bubbled away there in the background growing up writing and playing a little, until diving into the craft a little deeper in her 20’s.
She’s a wanderer this one. Bailing out from Christchurch more than once. Australia. India. The circus. Based in Wellington today. Maybe Dunedin next. Always keen for a change of scene physically, socially and spiritually. Constant movement seems to have added some depth to her music. She admits to having spent some time writing ‘bad poetry’, but once that guitar arrived and she got A-minor sorted, Emily Fairlight got to work. And what lovely work it is. It’s at times a cold, dark place she takes us, but it’s pretty. There are even moments of sweetness, but the shadows are always there and threatening to grow longer. She didn’t mind that she reminds me a little of Julia Jacklin, but I do find her a little heavier. As if just by being a little older, she’s got more to draw on.
That, and being in New Zealand. We’ve made plenty of dark films and music and art over the years on these lonely little islands and currently we’re in the thick of some magnificent ‘Aotearoa Gothic’ music; Bernie Griffen, The Eastern, Reb, Marlon, Aldous, Dead Little Penny, Vincet HL, Nadia Reid and others. And as you add Emily Fairlight to the list, there’s a familiar little town in the story: Lyttelton. A place where the landscape has informed the writing and making of more than one superb batch of songs. Not a lot of them pop.
I’m not sure any other kind of music could come out of that seaside town other than what does. Where everything’s in exactly the right place, but none of it feels like it was forced to be in there.
There’s an unusual component to Emily’s songwriting too, in that she’s had to adapt to the effects of a serious head injury. A simple but brutal fall changed the way she felt, and the way she went about writing songs. A side effect of any such injury is an either temporary or lingering inability to concentrate on too many things at once. Staring down the barrel of this, Emily resolved to concentrate on what matters most to her: The songs on Mother of Gloom.
The trembling strings that open the album on Body Belowset the sonic template for what’s to follow, rising and falling as if adrift on a sea on a clear day, but still rolling from a recent storm. Drifting, rising, falling. Drifting. Lost but not bothered about it. We’re on a cold ocean trying to make landfall. But the hills are too steep, the shore too rocky, so we float by on the green, cold deep. Kelp is long and black, alien, threatening to reach out and touch us.
It’s beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty of a sky filling with storm clouds. The best kind. Her vocal comes and goes, trading places with the instruments at times, and at other times holding a note for longer…just a bit longer, then suddenly way longer than the others that have made up the particular melody. It’s always just long enough.
I’m about on my 4th time through Mother of Gloom. I’m wandering further and further into Emily’s world. And I like it here. We all just wander around doing our own thing, the ground’s wet, the sun will dissappear behind those hills soon – no-one’s really making eye contact. We’re all alone together.
Although, as I’ve perhaps overstated, the music is clearly informed by our geography, much of it was recorded at Cats Eye Studio in Austin where Emily was touring, before being finished off at The Sitting Room back in Lyttelton. There are these lovely trumpets and accordians wandering in and out of proceedings, most notably in ‘The Bed’ that would be right at home in a Calexico song, as if they’d literally been absorbed into the tune just because the song was visiting the area. But I’m assured they always had their part. And assured also of how easy it is to find a high standard of accordian and trumpet player wandering around Texas. She had found herself there, incidentally, invited by the studio’s owner after he saw her doing her song ‘The Escape’ on Facebook. It’s funny how things work. And work it does. This music seeps into you. You know you like it straight away, but it creeps, just as it is played, patiently. Until it has you in a firm grip that you hope it won’t let go any time soon.
Live, I imagine the songs will pack a little more punch. Not that they need too, I just like the idea of Emily projecting her voice a little more in a peformance setting, trying just a tiny bit harder. Maybe a little of the polish will come off these wonderful recordings when she has an audience she can see – with the band featuring players from The Datsuns and Fur Patrol, there’s every chance. To hear these songs in a raw form might just be quite fucking exquisite.
Emily Fairlight is the real deal. A wanderer, maybe a dreamer. A listener and a watcher. Imperfect, carefree with potential for recklessness. Perhaps just a tiny bit broken.
Exactly the kind of person you want making music.
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