Emily Jane White – They Moved In Shadow All Together (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 40:52 minutes | 879 MB | Genre: Indie Folk
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Talitres

The title of Emily Jane White’s fifth album, They Moved in Shadow All Together, is a play on 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. White remembers being struck by the vision of the travellers’ collective movement – fragmented, yet whole – and felt its resonance with her burgeoning record and its thematic exploration of trauma. The 11 songs on They Moved in Shadow All Together focus conceptually upon the symptomatology of trauma, a pattern of experiences marked by a fragmentation of the self. These songs contend with the impact of trauma on individual and collective identity – the shattered pieces within the psyche left to cope after tragedy, and the dissociative co-habitance of belief and disbelief that results. White wrote “The Black Dove” in support of the anti-racist struggle against police violence. In “Womankind,” she mourns the continuing epidemic of violence against women, and the silences that suppress the truths of survivors. She studied classical singing while working on this album, which enabled her to broaden her vocal range. Throughout the recording process, she experimented extensively in the echo chamber at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco. She used the room as her instrument, wherein she gave herself permission to roam free, exploring every capability and constraint.

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Emily Jane White – Ode To Sentience (2010)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 41:24 minutes | 443 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Talitres Records

West coast balladeer Emily Jane White’s third album, Ode to Sentience, makes its home in the place where an irresistible force meets an immovable object, and the two create a deceptive state of seeming stasis. In fact, White’s songs take a microscope to the meeting point between the two, documenting the quiet but intense pressure that’s being applied there. With her cool, breathy voice, White could easily just coast her way through less weighty concerns and achieve a pleasingly breezy feel, but that’s not what she’s after. The songs on Ode to Sentience simmer with dark feelings just barely held in check, occasionally bubbling up to the surface just long enough to make moody insinuations on the proceedings. White’s measured vocal delivery betrays just the slightest tinge of melancholy, but for the most part she maintains enough distance from the subjects of her songs to get them all the way across the plate without ever descending into pathos or melodrama. That’s not to say these songs lack drama, though. Co-produced by White with Ross Harris, Ode to Sentience sports elegant, graceful chamber-folk arrangements that make the most of the space between the instruments. Simple acoustic guitar and piano lines, effective in their angularity, take center stage, with subtle touches providing succinct sonic shading around the edges. Of course, it’s all in the service of the songs, and of White’s vocals, which waft over the top of the tracks with a minimum of fuss but an undeniable sense of purpose. It’s the kind of record that could provide an excellent soundtrack for the first half of a horror movie, when intimations of unsettling phenomena are subtly suggested before all hell breaks loose. ~ J. Allen

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Emily Jane White – Immanent Fire (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 38:19 minutes | 439 MB | Genre: Indie Folk, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Talitres

Emily Jane White’s new album juxtaposes a heavy melancholy with an intimate touching lightness through her singular alto voice backed by orchestral percussion, soaring strings, heavy guitars, a choir of voices, and an overall cinematic presentation of dynamic songwriting. Written over a two year period her sixth album “Immanent Fire” recognizes our moment at the precipice of species annihilation, as she guides her listener through the feeling of life on a planet at the brink of destruction: “I watched the wind make the roses bend/does X really mark the end?” White honours the sacred, the earthly, and all that is deemed feminine, even as these very elements are threatened with the violence of contemporary systems of power. This is the dominant paradigm of modernity that feminist spiritual philosopher and witch Starhawk has named the “war on immanence.” Speaking directly from the fires incinerating California, White laments the destruction of the sacred feminine and the earth at once: “And she a holy vessel breathes/And you sit and watch her bleed/And you, torched a hole in the sky/And you, watched your earnings fly/And you, sit there as she lies/In blood, right before our eyes.” Ten songs, all written in minor keys, present a deepening storm of melody that offers the hopeful ray of Emily’s voice as the waves of rhythm crash and dance around her. Just before-or perhaps after-the despair seems to overwhelm, her vocals open up and bloom like a lens flare, creating an ecstatically painful emotional brilliance that the listener clings onto with pleasure. Her voice is the listener’s guide, a steady and reassuring presence as they march through eerie landscapes, caverns of reverb, church organs and synthetic arpeggios. The occasional samples of birds, insects, and thunder mix with the blend of electronic and acoustic instruments, a subtle reminder of the necessary link between the fate of our ecology and the moral use of technology.

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Emily Jane White – Blood / Lines (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:49 minutes | 918 MB | Genre: Indie Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Talitres

Emily Jane White is an American singer and songwriter from Oakland, California who has released five solo albums and toured internationally. In December 2013, White released Blood/Lines that included a contribution by Marissa Nadler. It was described as “a new stylistic development in her repertoire” and having a “neo-gothic feel”.

After releasing three albums in three years (2008s Dark Undercoat, 2009s Victorian America, and 2010s Ode To Sentience), Emily Jane White wrote over 100 sketches between January 2011 and October 2012. Her new album Blood Lines is a selected compilation of these songs. Recorded in a secluded studio in Sonoma County, the quiet environment provided Emily a place to explore new directions with artistic integrity and creative control, layering synthesizer, electric guitar, and multiple tracks of vocals into nine heavily reverbed scenes. With the help of friends and collaborators, Emilys worlds were diversified with strings, backing vocals, and heavy drums.

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