Emily Jane White Gets Washed Away

15 October, 2019
Written by Marky Edison

Emily Jane White returns with an artful new video for latest single: ‘Washed Away’. The latest cut of compellingly dark, twisted folk to emerge from her upcoming sixth album, Immanent Fire, is accompanied by a new video filmed by Kristin Cofer and edited by Amber Beaton.

In music and visuals, the ‘Washed Away’ video sees Emily Jane White sending a clear and timely message about caring for our fragile environment. Speaking about the new track Emily says: “'Washed Away' is about how we are severed from our natural world, how pervasive communication through technology dominates so much of our lives. This song speaks to the creative importance of spending time in nature and how it must be seen and valued. It's a relationship. I feel this disconnect is directly linked to the climate crisis and ongoing destruction of the planet."

Immanent Fire is out on November 15, Via Talitres. Written over a two year period, her sixth album recognises our moment at the precipice of species annihilation, as she guides her listener through the feeling of life on a planet at the brink of destruction.

Acknowledging these conditions in which we live, White offers what she has been best suited to on all of her albums: an exploration of the internal world. What is the feeling of life in the Capitalocene? Here, White offers a compassionate but also raw exposure of the anxiety, addiction and depression that have become normative. At the same time, she produces an alternative path: the revaluation of the feminine, the receptive, the vulnerable, the emotional. A turn toward the centre, the appreciation and experience of life itself—a practice which has, in our moment of ubiquitous despair, become a form of resistance.

The ten songs present a deepening storm of melody that offers the hopeful ray of Emily’s voice as the waves of rhythm crash and dance around her. Just before—or perhaps after—the despair seems to overwhelm, her vocals open up and bloom like a lens flare, creating an ecstatically painful emotional brilliance that the listener clings onto with pleasure. Her voice is the listener’s guide, a steady and reassuring presence as they march through eerie landscapes, caverns of reverb, church organs and synthetic arpeggios. The occasional samples of birds, insects, and thunder mix with the blend of electronic and acoustic instruments, a subtle reminder of the necessary link between the fate of our ecology and the moral use of technology.