Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter Emma Geiger “weaves an ostensibly calm, tender style of folk,” we wrote back in October, “though dip beneath the surface and you’ll find a more turbulent mood. The push and pull of competing currents which represent the unseen physics of any relationship.” There, we were describing the single ‘All Your Words’, which “blur[red] nostalgia and desperation into its conflicted sound,” as we put it, “that strange tension between knowing change is needed and being unable to quite picture what might come next.” But the sentiment could stand for Geiger’s work more generally.
Take brand new single, ‘Empty’, released along with a video Emma Geiger directed together with Archer Boyette. “The idea for the video started with the pomegranate without knowing why, just feeling connected to it as something beautiful and strange,” she explains. “But it holds a lot of significance that fits with the song’s themes. It is a symbol of death, abundance, love, and is also in the myth of Persephone, who after eating the seeds of a pomegranate is doomed to spend part of the year in the underworld with Hades.”
Boyette adds vocals to the track too, joining Michael Grigoni (pedal steel) and Emma Kelly (violin) in helping Geiger bring a delicate yet evocative sound to life. The sense of ambiguity is again a key facet, where apparent dualities are challenged and contradicted in much the same way as in the story of Persephone. “The story in ‘Empty’ feels parallel to this myth,” as Geiger continues. “The entrapment in love despite a desire to escape; being convinced by the other to stay. There seem to be endless parallels between the world we created in the video and Persephone’s fate; the river as a boundary between earth and the underworld; the pomegranate pulled from it as though sent from the underworld; submerging in the river as both departure from earth and rebirth. It’s interesting how these myths subconsciously shape our perception of the world.”
No I don’t want to let go
No I don’t want to leave
But I’m not one
To know when I should grieve
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‘Empty’ is out now and available from all the usual places.
Photo by Archer Boyette, album art by Adam Sniezek