EMILY GRAY - EP REVIEW

Emily Gray - Apocalypse EP 

Release Date: Out Now

I'm not sure how an English folk singer-songwriter wound up living in Catalonia writing a concept EP about the apocalypse but sometimes you just have to ignore how things have brought you to this point in life and deal with what's in front of you. 'Apocalypse' opens with 'Shock' (an understandable emotion at the beginning of the end) and finds Gray delivering a spoken word voice note to nobody before settling in to a traditional folk lament about the end of the world. Moving on to 'Regret', the last of humanity moves in to the mental fallout of being the only person left roaming the earth and how limiting that is but set to a mournful Spanish-folk guitar pluck. 

'Hope', as the say, is what gets you in the end but it is also what will get you through and Gray's wandering in the wastelands is picked out melodically as her vocals layer up with increasing desperation. Sadly, 'Despair' follows but as the funereal guitar notes lead us down a path of inevitability there is a sense of release and relief in the inevitability of it all. The EP finishes, unusually, with 'Epilogue' which brings a sense of closure to proceedings but this isn't your usual EP. You could see this being used as the basis for small theatre production or perhaps a dance piece or you could just enjoy it for what it is - a thoroughly modern take on the folk genre dealing with themes that traditional folk musicians never had to deal with. Emily Gray is a unique song writer and a talent that should be celebrated even if the subject matter of this collection is a tad on the bleak side. 

More information: https://www.facebook.com/Emilygraymusician

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