Album Review: EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

You couldn’t accuse Erika M Anderson of not being committed to her art. Past Life Martyred Saints, her full length solo debut (she has performed in a number of bands, including Gowns) heralds the arrival of a searingly intense, firecracker talent that doesn’t hold anything back  It’s a mesmerising record, at once ugly and beautiful, and never less than fascinating.

Tracks such as ‘Butterfly Knife’ hint at a damaged mindset and a distinctly troubled past and there’s no lack of anger here too. “These drugs are making me so sad / But I can’t stop taking them”, she sings on a-capella country-tinged ‘Coda’. On ‘California’, EMA rages against the city she moved to when she was still a teenager.  The steam-of-consciousness half-sung, half-spoken vocals will remind listeners of REM’s ‘E-Bow the Letter’ or Wilco’s ‘She’s a Jar’, but the tone is pure disenfranchised youth: “Fuck California, you made me boring”, she rails. It’s a beautiful song too.

This is a stroppy, uncontained record, and as such, EMA’s self-loathing and despair could get overbearing, but she’s such a captivating presence it never does. On ‘Marked’ her voice starts out cracked and broken, caught in super-close-up. It adds to the sense of someone coming from a deeply troubled place. The song has shades of Panda Bear’s compositional style about it, but EMA’s slightly-off-key warble recalls that other great, volatile songstress and likely inspiration, Cat Power. The track’s finale, where her voice comes into key, is really quite stunning. The buzzing that underpins the mantra-like ‘Butterfly Knife’ lends the song a sense of chaos, but there’s a beauty in there that’s not hard to extract. The same could be said of much of this debut.

Past Life Martyred Saints will not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s a record likely to pick up a cult following. “I'm begging you please to look away”, she sing-speaks on ‘California’. On the contrary, you’ll find it impossible to take your eyes off her.