East Texas songwriter Vincent Neil Emerson first made waves in the country scene with his 2019 debut, Fried Chicken and Evil Women. The record that staked his claim to a place in the truthful and straightforward end of the genre championed by the likes of Townes van Zandt and Guy Clark.
Emerson found himself in a difficult period during last year’s lockdown, frustrated at not being able to play to live audiences. Instead, he retreated to his shed and began to write new material. The result is a brand new self-titled record, produced by Rodney Crowell, an album that promises to continue the same thread of unpretentious country but with an increasingly personal edge. “The floodgates opened up for me in my songwriting and emotionally,” he says of the writing process, which led him to confront some intensely intimate subjects.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on single ‘Learnin to Drown’, which sees Emerson grapple with the death of his father. “I’ve been trying to write a song about my father’s passing for a while,” Emerson explains. “I was just having a hard time processing that emotionally. Before I was always trying to find a way to kind of dance around it and not really give too much away. But there’s no beating around the bush here.”
The ambience is worn and weary, as Emerson confronts personal pain and hardship with an air of resigned grace. But there’s also a glimmer of wistful beauty that plays across the everyday scenes like the silvery light of the moon, elevating these musings on misery into something almost beautiful.
I been sleepin’ in my car
been movin’ fast
but it seems I ain’t gone far
and I can’t believe
what I am
and what I used to be
Vincent Neil Emerson will be released on the 25th June via La Honda Records and Thirty Tigers, and you can pre-order it now.
Photo by Melissa Payne