Fertility Writes

THERE’s no shortage of singer-songwriters at the moment.

At times it seems that anyone with a semi-decent voice, a guitar, and an ounce of imagination has decided to hurl themselves onto the acoustic bandwagon and have a stab at being a star.

Most fall off never to be seen again. Many of those who remain are touted as the next big thing and then too vanish in a puff of earnest self-importance.

But a select few possess such talent, insight, intelligence and humour they find themselves here to stay.

One such artist is adopted Oxford artist Emmy the Great. With a silvery voice and a knack for pointed lyrics and sublime melody, she has that rarest of skills – the ability to change your day just by singing.

A fixture on the Oxford music scene for at least four years, she has finally released her debut album.

Called First Love, it is a compulsive body of work, which has to be a contender for one of this year’s best.

The title track (check out the beautifully shot video on YouTube), Gabriel, The Hypnotist’s Son and current single We Almost Had a Baby are powerful and typical of her brooding and emotional narrative style.

Summed up by Emmy as “passive aggressive”, her songs are deceptively breezy. Yet here lurks raw emotion, regret and even pain.

“My music has been described as ‘a long drawn out moan at my boyfriend’!” says Emmy – real name Emma Lee-Moss.

“It’s menstrual music – the music of oestrogen. “I’m not writing music for women, but I am a girl, and that’s what I’m singing about."

Despite her presence on the local music scene, Emmy is a Londoner, who, until the age of 12, lived in Hong Kong. The experience was a formative one.

“I was the only English girl in a Chinese school," she recalls.

“I was weird to them and spent a lot of time on my own.”

But it was hanging around among our own dreaming spires that set her on the path to her current role as acoustic darling.

“I do like Oxford,” she says. “There’s a real music community.

“I had three very close friends in Oxford when I was a student in London – one who worked for the QI Club, which was our local; one who went to Ruskin College; and one who lived on a canal boat.

“It was our golden age. I used to finish classes and get in my car and go straight to Oxford.

“Most of my songs started life on the A40 on the way there, or are set in the city — like my song Bad Things Coming, We Are Safe - which is about a flat in St Giles.

“I remember coming back from a party in the city and getting the urge to write my first proper song, so I would say, without Oxford, no songs!

"It's always good to come back too, because I know it so well. I always have a sneaky place to park and know where to find a toilet if I’m walking down High Street."

And her name?

“It was a joke!" she laughs.

“Me and my friends had a competition to find the dumbest nicknames for each other.

“Everybody called me Emmy, which I hated, so I decided to call myself Emmy the Great.

“Then, when I did my first demo that's the name I used, because at first I wanted to be in a band not on my own.

“And now I’m 25 years-old and have a name like a children’s cartoon character!”

Emmy plays live with a mixed bunch of musicians, who have included Euan Hinshelwood of Younghusband, Tom Rogerson of Three Trapped Tigers, Ric Hollingbery of Pengilly’s and Pete Baker, formerly of Mohair.

So how did she attract such an A-team of musicians?

“I blew a bugle from Narnia, and they all appeared!" she laughs.

"Everybody has got their own project, though.

“You don't expect to meet anyone who only aspires to playing your music for three months a year, and I wouldn’t want to keep someone from whatever else they are doing. It's more like a community.”

Her album is self-released, self-funded and self-produced, and recorded at a dilapidated studio in rural Lancashire.

“And it has been roundly hailed as a work of genius earning her national airplay.

So has she fallen into any bad rock'n'roll habits?

“I can't really party hard as I lose my voice," she admits.

“I try not to have any vices, other than one. coffee. But that's worse than all the others to be honest.

“And you can do it in front of everybody else, which only makes it even worse!"

Emmy the Great’s debut First Love is out now on the Close Harbour label.