EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

I'm already sick of 90s fetishism.

Though, to be fair, I spent much of the 90s fetishizing the 80s.

this album is good but its a bit, heavy? like everything is these cavernous spaces & collisions

There's more to this than 90's revisionism. Take away the voice and you've got something equating a rougher-edged Fennesz. The vocal work is great though - interesting harmonic measures going on here. I like it a lot- a hazy, heavy atmosphere I can sink into

Funny you bring the Fennesz reference... in the singlesjukebox I mentioned California sounded like some sort of lost Sonic Youth/Fennesz single split collaboration. It might be the only song on the record which reminds me of Fennesz tho...

I think the real problem with this record is it has dissociative identity disorder.

NP: "California"

This doesn't sound like Fennesz at all. Does sound like Sonic Youth a bit, more accurately that Kim Gordon/Ikue Mori/DJ Olive SYR but with the delivery/cadence of Michael Stipe on "Strange Currencies." Really glad I listened to this tho.

i don't think the 'echoing' / 'cavernous' qualities of it are really anything that needs to be traced back to specific influences so much as 'experimenting with recording on your laptop and turning that reverb plugin all the way up' or 'playing around with some really boss guitar pedals but not playing so much guitar'

new live recording out now http://soundcloud.com/incubate/sets/ema-incubate-2011/

just saw her live. didn't find it particularly interesting, and also didn't care for the hushed reverence of the crowd

A few months old, but a new one off single. Heart wrenching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4X6mU2QcxY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WItFIhNzAww

Gotta say, as someone who couldn't have possibly loved her last album more, this new single is kind of a disappointment. Nothing really going on there.

Man, WTF is this? Hard to believe this is the same person who made Red State and PLMS. Just terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvyUN0P6yvk

hahaha wtf

Into it!

dig it. fun & funny, though slight. makes sense, too, doubling down on 90s indie (90s everything by the look of it).

http://www.internetarchaeology.org/img/Moving/Recreation/07.gif

http://25.media.tumblr.com/9cd48e9a89876c2b37488e88bc6bc8a4/tumblr_n1ikrphI9h1todheko1_400.gif

yes

that's SOOOOOOO bad

Gaudy video aside, I don't get what's so objectionable about this. It's breezy, but in a good way, and the lyrics are every bit as loaded/funny as anything on PLMS. It's not a big leap or anything; it's just EMA's version of a summer jam.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/1b32d4bdaec2d7b7bc1c36117df76480/tumblr_n1ikrphI9h1todheko2_400.gif

HOW DO YOU POST STUFF LIKE THAT?

kind of like it...

I stopped grimacing in horror about a minute in and actually started enjoying the song little, but that doesn't change the fact that a flippant 90s pastiche is not what I want from the author of Past Life Martyred Saints.

nah, this is rad. ridiculous, but that can be a good look, imo. not sure i want a whole album of royal trux by way of mary lou lord (or L7 or w/e), but i like the song more every time i hear it.

Maybe this will be some sort of Liz Phair trajectory

Like it or not, I can't see how this isn't a leap from PLMS. What songs there sound like this one or resemble it thematically? Getting from Butterfly Knife/Marked to So Blonde/Satellites, that's a huge change of direction. Feels like she's closed herself off from the world.

I like this. The animation reminds me of MC Skat Cat.

Just listened to both of these for the first time and I like them both a bunch and how different they are

I'm sorry, but in what way was Past Life Martyred Saints *not* a 90s retro revival record? Hasn't there been a ton of discussion about that upthead?

I honestly have to worry how much the (frankly terrible) video is affecting people's impressions of this song. I watched for about 20 seconds, thought "this is awful" then got up and did made up a cup of tea, and noticed that the song seemed about 10x better when I wasn't looking at the visuals.

Granted, it would take a pretty terrible video to taint a track that badly, but, um, it is a pretty terrible video.

i like the video! it's funny, not like SUPER funny, but funny enough. easily amused, i guess...

and yeah, PLMS was hella retro to begin with

The difference, if it really needs to be pointed out, is that PLMS was the 90s of Rid of Me/Live Through This -type confessionals, whereas this seems to be taking cues from, I dunno, Third Eye Blind or something.

http://pitchfork.com/features/update/9338-ema/

The difference, if it really needs to be pointed out, is that PLMS was the 90s of Rid of Me/Live Through This -type confessionals, whereas this seems to be taking cues from, I dunno, Third Eye Blind or something.

lol this is ridiculous, it sounds like belly

also it is like really good.

I think it's her best single. It's fun as hell, but about as pointed and barbed as most of PLMS. It's sardonic on the surface, but you can still hear the heavy heart underneath.

I hate this single so much

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ otm

It's grown on me quite a bit over the last 24 hours, but I still have no idea what to expect from the album.

the first single seemed to be a natural extension of the sound and attitude of the last album. this one, tho . . .

is an extension of the attitude of her on stage... I remember seeing videos of her live at the Pitchfork festival a few years ago and being really bummed. Realizing then that there's no way I want to ever see her play live.

But I don't hate this song. Kinda indifferent. So far based on this thread I'm not sure if that opinion is allowed!

lol. it's allowed, i'm pretty sure!

i don't like the song, which could put me in a near-exclusive club. who knows?

i swear like two days before this revive i found myself wondering what happened to this terrible artist, guess i know now

The album is half Alternative Nation mixtape (bad) and half spooky PLMS vibes (good). It really sounds like two different artists to me.

I have very much cooled on EMA's older stuff, both PLMS and Red State, after revisiting so I don't have a dog in this fight. I just find the change from "This is great, it sounds like the 90s" to "This is terrible, it sounds like the 90s" kinda perplexing. (I would really like if she sounded like Belly, I absolutely *loved* Belly.) I guess it's more like... use better descriptors, please.

It's in the voice basically. I don't care at all if something sounds like something from the 90s but she has a very generic rock voice and a weakness for melodrama when she lets rip whereas in the more restrained, hypnotic songs I think she sounds fantastic. Any less derivative? Probably not, but I far prefer it.

Is this gonna be her Celebrity Skin?

It's gonna be her 'New Jersey'...

i was alone in the citaaay