Emily Jane White - Alluvion [LP]

Emily Jane White's new album Alluvion is about personal and collective grief resulting from the loss of human life and the loss of our natural world. Produced and arranged by multi-instrumentalist Anton Patzner (Foxtails Brigade, Judgement Day), Alluvion was written and recorded during the height of the pandemic. More so than on any previous release, Emily almost completely eschews folk arrangements and instrumentation. Alluvion edges the borders of shoegaze and electronic pop without losing sight of the light within the gloom, the hope inside the void. The lead single, "Show Me the War," seamlessly blends synthesizer pulses and guitars, deep acoustic toms with drum machines. The somber dirge "Heresy" soars above obscurant dust clouds created by the destruction of women's spaces and cultures, guest vocalist Darkher's operatic lamentations a light that leads the listener out of grief's darkness. Even "Poisoned," the most traditionally Americana-sounding of the tracks, mixes Emily's finger-picked melody with distorted guitar stabs and a wall of synths, her lyrics a guide through these contradictions. In "Hold Them Alive," Emily confronts the destruction caused by unacknowledged grief directly: "So how do I walk while holding some kind of words that morph from bereaving? Withered is the arch, the moon hangs bleeding. I've lived, the dark energy feeding."