SING YOUR LIFE: “I have no control over the songwriting process at all. It’s really just things that I’ve been going through strung together by melodies.” |
Tom Waits once said that somewhere down the line cars replaced animals in a lot of popular music. He blamed this on that turning point when people started to identify with driving to work more than with walking or riding a horse anywhere. The everyday interaction with animals other than domestic pets has become a whimsical thing of the past. Which leaves those musicians who still write numbers with furry protagonists in a bit of a throwback situation, their songs almost instant period pieces.
Amelia Emmet, whose Mr. Sister is one of the creakiest, most chilling folk projects to pop up in Boston in ages, tried the nature scene for a while, but she bid it farewell after what amounted to a tough stint in real life this last year. "I just don't even play them out anymore because they aren't any good. Those are my Joanna Newsom songs — all about birds and foxes and things."
Emmet, 23 and newlywed, has undergone a kind of personal renaissance with her music, and a lot of that has had to do with getting her head out of the clouds. She's found herself flat in the middle of a hungry scene armed with an unearthly voice and a small notebook full of songs. We meet for coffee and tea to chat about the whole deal in the Brookline JP Licks — which, it turns out, was where she worked all through her painterly stint at MassArt.
"I was really happy being the depressive art student. I was having anxiety and panic attacks and struggling with 'self-image' issues. After graduation, having that finally taken away from you really makes you wonder what the point of it ever was, though."
Emmet began experimenting with songwriting her freshman year at school, cobbling projects together with different partners and playing out at places like the All Asia. She would find her footing in songs about her own day-to-day experiences; lately, many of these have centered on her mother's battle with cancer. "I have no control over the songwriting process at all. It's really just things that I've been going through strung together by melodies."
Sounds simple, but her writing benefits from an effective subconscious. There's a great interior editing process that holds every song to a tight pop skeleton, no matter how prickly it gets on the surface. And there are all kinds of innuendos and allusions that she'll admit she didn't even realize were there to begin with.
"I find things in songs months after I write them that are so obviously about things close to my personal life." Even the blatantly personal ones wind up sneaking in unintended images. "The song 'Swollen Arm' is completely related to my mother's cancer and dealing with losing a part of yourself, when up until this very moment I've always felt it was about my cranky uncle who has no arms."
