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Emily Barker has always been a striking, exceptionally versatile song writer and musician, successfully shifting the musical approach from one album to the next. Before starting to write the songs for Fragile as Humans, her new album, Barker wrote the word ‘EXPERIMENT!’ on a postcard and pinned it to a cork board in her writing room alongside family photos, postcards of Aretha Franklin and Red-tailed black cockatoos, and “a strip of paper from my niece wishing me a happy day”. She purposefully set out to challenge herself creatively: “I wanted to favour the odd and less obvious lyric, chord progression, melody”. The result is an unpredictable, varied, and quirky album which, on the surface, ought not to sound anything like a coherent whole but unequivocally does and represents Barker’s most personal, emotive album to date.
Brought up in Western Australia, Emily Barker has spent most of her adult life in England, and she is now moving back to Australia; the new album is a bookend to that experience, as she put it: “Making this record was a beautiful way to wrap up my 21 years of living in the UK before heading home to WA”. Barker’s music became familiar to millions when a re-recorded version of Nostalgia, the opening track from 2008’s atmospheric Despite The Snow, the first album she recorded with The Red Clay Halo, was used as the theme tune for the very popular BBC1 series Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh. Another song, Pause, from 2001’s Almanac, was used as the theme for the BBC2 series The Shadow Line. Her more recent releases have ranged from the funky, soulful Sweet Kind Of Blue (2017) recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis, A Window to Other Ways (2019), a superb duo album with Marry Waterson, and most recently, A Dark Murmuration Of Words (2020), inspired by a concern with the impact of climate change on the natural world.
Fragile as Humans immerses us in the human condition, examining grief, pain, loneliness and loss, but also sparkling with hope and optimism. The title track reflects that spectrum, exploring the vitality of love – ‘With each day that passes, He’s my favourite way to spend my time’ – but comes back to the impermanence of both love and life and the importance of recognising along the way the impact others have on us:
My older self knows one day he won’t be with me
There’s an order to life should it obey
And I’m daily reminded by those who left early
To always find the time to say
It’s true that you shaped me
In ways I’m still learning – as if I were made of you
And it’s true we are living, living then dying
Fragile as humans and made of who we love
The poignancy of the lyrics is aided by the accompaniment by bright, folky guitar picking, light touches on bass, keys, and synth, and a wistful, ‘less obvious’ melody.
A loping, back-beat drum rhythm drives With Small We Start, the opening track, with subtle jangly electric guitar adding colour between the verses. The song is in part about her father and her childhood, and part of a meditation on life’s incremental changes, and, in the catchy chorus, the need at times to pause and reflect:
Take note, take heart, with small we start
To rewire, rethink, step back from the brink
Take hold, tear old, worn habits apart
Go steady, go, with small we start
Emily’s vocals are quite poppy, almost spoken at times, sounding we can imagine like her younger self.
Wild To Be Sharing This Moment musically returns to Barker’s more atmospheric, redolent approach and addresses the state of the world. It picks up the environmental theme of her last album, together with issues of war and the disruption and tragedies that ensue. Introduced by a slightly ominous marching drum pattern, the anthemic vocal is intermingled with swelling synth-sounding strings and tapers to a delicate, quiet ending.
Call it a Day explicitly draws a line under Emily’s two-plus decades spent living in England, chronicling her positive experiences – friendships and music connections. After a drone and dream effect introduction, the song adopts a fittingly happy mood – no regrets here – moving breezily on a pacy waltz-like tune. The lyric on The Quiet Ways is more reflective, less optimistic: ‘Has this time misshapen me?’; ‘What of this will stay the same?’; ‘I’m not who I used to be’; ‘The quiet ways that wе have changed’. The loose drum and bass lines and echoing keyboard refrain evoke a soothing, almost hypnotic effect, but with something of a hint of the Memphis sound of the Sweet Kind Of Blue album, but Emily’s vocals are muted than her fuller soulful voice.
Producer Luke Potashnick puts Emily’s expressive voice at the very forefront, exposing her vulnerable yet always assured range – backed by cinematic accompaniment provided by Richard Causon on keys, Tim Harries on bass, and Tom Visser on drums, Potashnick contributing additional guitars, effects and studio wizardry. The album was inspired and written in both hemispheres: during a writing residency in Stroud while people-watching at London’s Kings Cross station and in Western Australia following pandemic-related border closures. Barker’s intentionally idiosyncratic approach draws your attention, often catching you off guard and ultimately enveloping you with a strong sense of emotional maturity, tender singing and shrewd, understated musicianship. “If I could choose one word for people to hold in their minds as they listen to this album,” Barker has said, “that word would be: compassion.” Fragile as Humans is a compassionate listen in every sense. We can but eagerly await whatever turn Emily Barker takes next, based back in her home country.
Fragile as Humans (3rd May 2024) Everyone Sang
Order via Bandcamp: https://emilybarker.bandcamp.com/album/fragile-as-humans
