IT would be a cheap gag to say Sussex folkie Emmy The Great is Emmy The Not So Great but why avoid being cheap.
Truth is, the great expectations born of 2009’s debut First Love do not bear fruit on this beige sequel. Virtue had begun as a series of stories after her engagement to an atheist was terminated when he left her for the church, seemingly taking her book of tunes with him.
She hid herself in the country, buried herself in books on saints and folk tales and then married the ancient to the modern with imagery of industrial buildings, mushroom clouds and, er, dinosaur sex.
She calls her music “digital medieval” – imagine Angela Carter meeting the Cocteau Twins in the woods – but only Paper Forest (In The Afterglow Of Rapture) matches such a tantalising prospect. Unlike the atheist, you will not be converted.
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