ROUTES & BRANCHES
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
September 17, 2024
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
On her fifth full-length collection, New Yorker Emily Frembgen asks, Does everybody feel this way? To an extent, yes. But, fortunately, not entirely. No Hard Feelings risks deeper dives and explores more personal places than previous albums. I'm honest to a fault, Frembgen has admitted, even to the point of working with producer Hugh Pool to record her band live, often nailing down first take vocals. The artist we encounter is vulnerable and unfiltered, quirky and relatable. Emily Frembgen is someone for whom we wish the best.
She arrived at this point indirectly, through a happenstance maze of odd jobs and opportunity. Hanging out at a very young age with her single mother at Wax Trax record store in Denver. Developing an open mic at a vegan donut shop. Pretending to be a country artist to land a gig cultivating an americana concert series at Brooklyn's Knitting Factory. Like one does. Frembgen's circuitous route overlaps with theatre and comedy, writing and recording her indie- and anti-folk originals for the past twenty years. It all somehow added up to her friend and local New York legend Jeffrey Lewis helping her land a deal with the Don Giovanni record label. Which brings us to No Hard Feelings.
Emily Frembgen's new sessions favor a more country accent to her indie folk base, an influence that she attributes to listening to Lucinda Williams and Kathleen Edwards as a teen. The songwriter likens "Hard 2 Love" to Lucinda's classic "Blue". She sings, I'm so crumpled up / Have you had enough / Are you tired of my face? Bruce Martin's piano complements gently fingerpicked acoustic and Frembgen's lovely vocal: I'm not hard to get / I'm just hard to love. "Fentanyl" plugs in for a fuller sound, addressing the residual social anxiety we've carried forward from the pandemic: Two years doing nothing / Makes everybody crazy / And I've never spent so much time in bed / And every time I see somebody / I'd rather be alone / And when I'm alone I go through everything that we said.
It's a seemingly cathartic record, with lyrics that range from self-deprecation to reassurance. "Are You Listening" rides a low-slung guitar riff and Melody Stolpp's 60s girl group backing vocals for a satisfying pop jangle: The world doesn't run out of people to help you / Stop thinking that they won't. "Poorgirl" admits, Was lied to / Since who knows when. The song finds Frembgen awash in regret and even despair: I know I keep fucking up / But I can't stop now. Like Jonathan Richman or Amy Rigby, her voice can seem uncertain and plaintive, a quality that lends itself perfectly to the unfiltered vibe of No Hard Feelings.
To the credit of Emily Frembgen and her producer, that might come across as pretty depressing on paper is actually charming and even not without a certain outsider humor (heck, her last two albums were titled My Cat From Hell and Me Or the Dog). Among the project's looser tracks is "Drink Tonight", a honky tonk flavored number that first appeared on My Cat, having been written to prove her country bona fides, and to encourage patrons to visit the bar. "Harder/Easier" is set to a junkyard accompaniment of clanging percussion and plinked mandolin. Still, she strikes a smart balance on No Hard Feelings, never settling overlong into any one sound or sentiment. "Magazines" delivers a darker moment, with a gutty electric guitar solo. It's precisely Emily Frembgen's range and openness that lend her new songs such an appeal. Very much her own artist, playing from such a personal place, she has stepped in front of the americana fray.
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