Emily Barker re-releases 2007 debut album

PFFEmily Barker – Photos.Fires.Fables.
Out 8th December

Emily Barker’s first solo album, originally released in 2007, has been repackaged in a beautiful new gatefold card sleeve, complete with all fifteen tracks from both previous versions of the album. Photos.Fires.Fables. contains some of Emily’s best loved songs, including ‘Home’, ’This Is How It’s Meant To Be’ and the original recording of ‘Fields of June’ featuring Steve Adams on vocals.

Emily says:

“I played one of my very first solo shows at The Bedford in Balham, London when my band at the time, the-low-country, got stuck in such bad traffic coming down from Cambridge that they missed the show. Somehow I managed to make it through on my own and afterwards, a young, Swedish man came up to me and introduced himself as Ruben Engzell and explained that he had just moved to London from Stockholm, Sweden and was working at a studio in Brixton.

“Not long in to our conversation, he asked me if I’d like to record a solo album. The timing was perfect. I’d just started to write songs that didn’t fit with our band sound and wanted to do something a bit different. I moved to London, wrote a bunch of songs and we spent lots of late nights, after Ruben had finished doing his paid work as an engineer during the day, in Iguana Studios, working until the early hours of the morning. It was a process that took a couple of years. Not having any budget to speak of, we managed to blag young musicians down to the studio to play their instruments in return for meals, which I would cook in the studio kitchen. Some of those musicians included, Gill Sandell, Jo Silverston and Anna Jenkins, who stuck with me and later went on to become The Red Clay Halo. That was nine years ago now!

Artist’s website: http://www.emilybarker.com/

Press from the original release: 

“possesses the authentic heartache that anchors all the best country music”
Q Magazine

“more than a touch of Gillian Welch and Neko Case… sharply observed songs are adventurously embellished by gypsy flourishes and haunting desert echoes that’d be at home on a Calexico album” Uncut

“displays her intuitive grasp of both mood and medium”
The Times 

“Lovely, lovely, lovely”
Independent on Sunday

“Barker’s voice can’t fail to grab people’s attention with echoes of Lucinda Williams’ rasp and Martha Wainwright’s cutest purr”
The Word Magazine