Music > Interviews

Interview with Emmy the Great

07/09/11

“It’s not you, it’s… Him.” When the real Emma-Lee Moss had to deal with the very real situation of her fiancé trading their relationship for a life with God, she found herself broken. Embattled with reason as to why he fell into the arms of his 3 lovers, the Holy Trinity, what Emmy got as severance, was a tap – a tap into her root creativity, which allowed her to write her tugging second album, ‘Virtue’. Borne out of pain, its reception on welcome ears is its healer, and we talked to Emmy a little about making it…

I’m always amazed still when I call someone overseas and the phone actually connects and you can hear them…! Yeah, I’m generally just amazed that I can get it together to just get this phone call. I’ve done a couple of shows and I’m recording a Christmas album – I’ve nearly finished it. 

Ah, I thought this was the stuff of legend. Are you recording it with Tim [Wheeler, frontman for Ash and Emmy’s new boyfriend]? Yeah, that’s what we’re doing this week.

Fantastic. How do you get yourself into a Christmassy mood, or has it been quite easy? Well we were gonna decorate the studio, I mean, we did some of it in May so we were gonna decorate the studio and make it Christmassy with lights and tinsel but when we got in we actually found that we didn’t need to, ‘cause the moment you start thinking about Christmassy things, it’s such a simple trigger to get yourself into the mood, you know.

I guess in the confinement of a studio, anything could be happening outside… Yeah, so we were going out into the street straight after, just looking around and being like, ‘Good Christmas to you sir’, and not understanding why people weren’t jolly and why it wasn’t cold.

And why you had a hankering for egg nog. So what’s your favourite bit about being in America, and how do you usually go down there when you play? American audiences are incredible; they’re so warm and friendly, it’s kinda like – you’re in Norwich, right? It’s not unlike being in the Norwich Arts Centre. There are certain venues in the UK where people just happen to be really, really friendly and that’s been my experience at all the American shows.

I was almost late calling as I was engrossed in your tour novel, ‘The Wet and Windy Moors’, in which you describe Norwich and its Domestic Life Museum. Did you ever make it there? No, but I will do, I will make it eventually.

Maybe when you come next month – - That’s a really good idea. If we have a night there and a bit of time in the morning, I will actually go at last.

I interviewed you a couple of years back, and when doing my research I noticed that people this time round have started comparing you to yourself on the first album, whereas at that time, they were comparing you to your peers all the time – do you feel like this different person that they’re comparing? The younger you than the one you are now? I am a different person. I don’t really notice the change in perception I guess; I’m not very good at looking at my career in a sweeping way, you know, I can’t see what it looks like from the outside, but as a person I’m very different… so different. When I think back to what I was like on my first album, sometimes I just think ‘who was that?!’

You describe your first album as an adolescent album – what would you describe this one as? This is quite a serious album, I think for me. I’d lost a bit of my lightness; I was thinking very seriously when I made this and I think when I look back upon it, it was a very different me when I made it to when I finished. It was all part of the healing process. I think it will remind me of someone that I was for a brief period who thought about things very seriously and who took things very hard. I was being faced with the complexity of lie for the first time. I’ve actually read a couple of reviews that have called it a dissertation and I don’t know if that’s a positive thing, but I kinda agree. I read a lot, I took in a lot of books and new theories and new thoughts before I made this album, and that’s what came out. I guess it’s kinda my dissertation at the university of life, haha!

‘Virtue’ was written out of a woman’s rite of passage getting engaged, then ultimately a break-up, but arguably it’s your best work to date, so do you think that to write a third album you’ll have to go on the hunt for drama?! I’ve already written a lot of stuff for the third album already; it’s just sort of there. I didn’t need to look for drama, that’s the thing: I’ve talked to a few of my friends about this, and I think for your first few albums you think you need to live this incredibly dramatic life and never be happy in your relationships, but then you get to the point where you’re like, no, I just have to be creative. This period of having just put the record out before I tour has been incredibly creative, because I’ve been very free and I’ve been travelling a lot. My head has been filled with songs and new places. I think what it is, is that I didn’t need to have a new horrifying experience, I just had to see a lot of new things.

As someone that studied journalism, I know you’ll understand the research part of the job, and that I know strange details about you, like the fact you prefer a Mooncup to Tampax, from our last interview! The line was completely crossed by News of the World though and you’ve been outspoken on that, but where do you think the line is? That’s so funny actually, because today I was just updating my boyfriend about the Johann Hari thing in a really kinda non-judgemental way ‘cause I don’t know much about it other than what I read up on today. But we were just saying that it’s not an exact – it’s a difficult thing writing articles because people don’t talk how you want people to read it. I just think it’s a flawed process. Then we started to talk about the NotW thing and how’s it’s easy to lose your humanity when you’re in the middle of a machine. People are really frail and it’s easy to get caught up in what you do. But I think if you say something about a person that they haven’t signed off themselves, then that’s crossing a line. 

Not one to just talk about current events, you’re much more of a do-er and I was warmed to read your stories about the London Clean-Ups. Tell us a bit more about the atmosphere there that day… Oh it was amazing, I think. It was strange because it was the worst thing I’ve ever been in the midst of, I mean, I’ve never been a street away from rioting, but then the next day, because the sun was shining and because everyone was safe in the morning – we knew we’d be safe in the light – everyone came out onto the streets, not just the clean-up people, but people were coming out of their houses. I went to this one pub which had been smashed up and as I was talking to him, this woman came out of her house and said, ‘I saw what happened, it was awful. We were scared in our house.’ Everyone was talking about it and the general attitude was fuck these people; this is our area and we’re not just gonna stand here and take this. The pubs were cleaned up and they were full of people, not just volunteers or people working there. Then this woman was like, ‘you know what, actually my kid wasn’t scared.’ She was talking about a neighbour who had come out to put a fire out because the Fire Brigade hadn’t turned up yet, but she was saying that they’re not the type of people to get scared. There was this sense of defiance, but not ugly defiance.

As an artist, you could have addressed these issues through song, but you’re much more hands on – is this something in your temperament? Yeah, I don’t know where it comes from. My family always wonder at it because they don’t do it! I think I picked it up in girl scouts or something. I was trying to work it out, but I think Kate Nash went to girl scouts as well, ‘cause she was there cleaning up. She’s just got that kind of air. I kinda made a pact with myself that because my job is my hobby, and I get a lot of time, I’d fill my spare time doing good things, or helpful things as much as I can. I don’t do it as a musician though, or someone with a following; it was only recently that I realised I could get the message out to people that way. It’s not Big Society by the way – it’s just US doing this stuff, and it’s not something the government has engineered, it’s just something they’ve necessitated by taking away so many of our services.

I can just imagine you and Kate Nash with your Girl Guides Riot Clean-Up badge now. I would actually really love that.

Emma Garwood

Emmy the Great comes to the Norwich Arts Centre on September 27th. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk.