“I sometimes feel a thrill caused by the strange, supernatural sensation that I’ve had the same impression on a previous occasion - or in a previous life. I make myself seize and nurture the feeling so that I can predict - or even control - what’s about to happen, or what I’m about to feel, although it usually disappears without anything happening. I wait for it to come, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve always been fascinated by “déjà vu”, that elusive, recurring mixture of illusion and reality which is one of the typical manifestations of paramnesia. It’s a recollection that’s got distorted in my mind; remembering having lived through situations and sensations that I’ve actually never experienced or felt before.I also - albeit less frequently – experience phenomena that are closely connected with paramnesia such as “jamais vu” (never seen before) and “presque vu”, (almost seen before). There are sudden moments (which can be both terrifying and exciting) when sensations, objects, and even people that I’ve known all my life are inexplicably seen in a fresh, unknown light - this is “jamais vu”.
Then there are others (which are no less exciting and captivating) when I feel as though I’m grasping an absolute truth in a sudden flash of clarity - this is “presque vu”.
On each of my repeated listens to the second album by New Zealander Emily Fairlight I get all three of these sensations in rapid succession - sometimes even at the same time.“Mother of Gloom” was recorded in Austin, Texas, and borrowing its title from a song by Martha Wainwright; it arrives seven years after her eponymous debut album and is being reissued in late spring by two labels, Occultation (UK) and Fishrider (NZ), after Emily put it out as a private pressing last year. It offers a dream-like soundscape, which immediately fills your senses with a passionate, uninhibited voice over a lush bed of acoustic instruments.The album opens with “Body Below” and, all of a sudden, that sense of “déjà vu” (or “déjà entendu”) pervades my senses. Even so, it’s a positive, calming feeling - I’ve been here before, I’ve had these dreams before, they’re already part of my emotional baggage. Even so, after just a moment, nothing really feels familiar to me. Ms Fairlight’s vocal depth and heartfelt tone are both disturbing and exciting; although the songs are performed conventionally, there’s something unusual about them that makes them seem strange, yet suddenly no less dear to me for all that.Then, as the refined sounds and delicate melodies of “Mother Of Gloom” succeed one another, I start to experience little epiphanies, as the reverb of “Water Water” drags me underwater, “The Desert”, which is almost instrumental, dazzles my senses, the trumpet on “Loneliest Race” leads me into a kind of rapture which is mystical yet worldly, with its southern scents and flavours. The desolate-sounding accordion and (even more so) trumpet on “The Bed” are somewhere between Morricone and Belville, while the sweet, melancholic “Sinking Ship” sets me on the road back home.The album is a book of poetry to be browsed, studied and savoured slowly, then assimilated consciously as you give yourself up to it. On “Private Apocalypse” Emily sings, “When no memories or words, pass through your lips/In my own apocalypse”, while the incredible “Time’s Unfaithful Wife” (“I love you like I loved the first ‘til death takes him one day”) deserves to ring on in my ears indefinitely, and the closing “Breathe Baby Breathe”, is airy and simple, with a caressing violin; such a short yet effective track yet what actually happens is that, when it ends, I find myself asking myself who I am, where I am and what I was doing before I immersed myself in such beauty.The pathos and depth of the experience that Emily Fairlight expresses through her unusual vocal performance makes “Mother Of Gloom” a suggestive, melancholic work, heartfelt and sad.
This is an album that could be a treaty on paramnesia, where the expressions “déjà vu”, “jamais vu” and “presque vu” take on immediate, positive meanings, coloured with therapeutic intensity and melancholic exultation.“