Singer-songwriter Emmy the Great has confirmed details of her new solo album April/??, which will be released in the UK on October 9 through Bella Union.

It is preceded by lead single Dandelions / Liminal, which she describes as being “a song about being OK with uncertainty, and learning to co-exist with your own sorrow, and the sorrows of the world.” It is available online now.

It is the fourth solo release for Emmy the Great, otherwise known as Emma-Lee Moss, following 2009’s First Love, Virtue in 2011, and 2016’s Second Love.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in London, Moss has also lived in Los Angeles and New York, but returned to Hong Kong in 2017. In recent years, she has worked as a composer for radio, TV, film and stage. Her credits include Starlee Kine’s groundbreaking US podcast Mystery Show and Sara Pascoe’s Out of Her Mind for BBC2. As a journalist, Moss has written for the Guardian, Vice, British GQ, and Wired.

Writing about April/?? on her official website, Moss said: “The album was recorded over two weeks in February 2018 in the Creamery in Greenpoint. It’s the fastest record I’ve ever made, which is ironic because its release was later delayed to accommodate a year’s maternity leave. I produced it with Bea Artola and Dani Markham, who was in my US band and also played drums. Jeffrey Fettig, our guitarist, also engineered, and the rest of the players were mostly friends as well as musical collaborators. These sessions became a kind of goodbye, and I left New York for Hong Kong permanently a few weeks after they finished.

“I’ll never know why the city called me back, but I know what it gave me. In return, I want to give it this album. That Mid-Autumn, nobody could have predicted what was to come, neither the atomisation that began with the anti-Extradition Law protests in June 2019, nor the struggle for democracy that continues now, through the Covid-19 pandemic. To witness your birth city in its greatest moment of need is a powerful, humbling event, and I know I watched Hong Kong’s destiny shift into something turbulent and uncertain.

“I’m glad I recorded what I felt there, during a precious, peaceful time, when life was so good that all I had to do was trust the moon. May it be just one small piece of witness among many, and may the voices of Hong Kong never stop speaking, and asking to be heard.”

Pre-order April/?? through Emmy the Great’s official website.

Watch the official video for Dandelions / Liminal below.

 singer-songwriter       indie-pop 

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.