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Uncork a bottle of Emily Rodgers and sip the wine-dark yearning of her songs until you are transported to another place. Deep and serious, this music enshrouds its listeners in a mood of pensive, introspective brooding. With song titles like "Winter," "Alone," "Going Away," and "No Way Out," Rodgers evokes a modern day Emily Dickinson, crafting verses about memory and longing.
Burgh Sounds photo
On the stage, Rodgers makes music with her eyes closed. Sometimes she gazes abstractly at the floor while the while atmospheres of her music close in. It's the kind of live performance expected from an artist who recorded her most recent album in a chair, facing the corner. The audience does not get up and dance to this, but sits and takes it in.
Rodgers' soothing, motherly voice consistently matches the music's dominant emotion, a forlorn sort of desolation. Her melodies surround the chords pleasantly, but also contribute to a dreamy, dissonant feeling of disorientation. Rodgers' voice enters melodic phrases just a little before or a little after they would be expected to. She is careful about her music, often reading her own lyrics from a small book on her mic stand. She is after a specific tone and will ask for just the right amount of reverb on her vocals to capture her signature detached, midnight sound.
Singing occupies most of Rodgers' attention in the live setting, with the bulk of the guitar work and atmosphere-making handled by her fiancee/guitarist, Erik Cirelli. All manner of electronically-enhanced guitar tricks converge in Cirelli's accompaniment, from Rolling Stones-like riffs to muted, quivering notes, stretched out for many moments at a time. Rodgers, meanwhile, lightly strums the guitar strings with her fingers.
It is true that, at times, the crunchy guitar tones in the chorus or the momentum of the bass lines resemble the alt-rock sounds of R.E.M., with whom the band has been frequently compared. But The Emily Rogers Band is about capturing a singular emotional feeling and exploring it through sound and word. Comparisons to other artists — Michael Stipe, Evanescence, Mazzy Star — ultimately fail to convey the root feeling of the music. Like poetry, Rodgers' songs will either grab you or they won't. If you can find the right state of mind and engage the music on its own terms, it will swirl and intoxicate with bittersweet abandon.
4:30 AM
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