RUSSACK, EMMA - Winter Blues (Sealed) (LP)

In keeping with the way Russack recorded her two 2018 albums she made with fellow Melbourne musician and great friend Lachlan Denton, over a year with Liam Halliwell and Dylan Young on hand, each track on the album was recorded in one take and live to tape at Phaedra Studies and mixed immediately thereafter by John Lee. Hence, not only its rusticity and fragility but also its immediacy and authenticity. Emma gave us a taste of the album in the single What Is Love? late in 2018. Recorded for the short film An Athlete Wrestling a Python, Emma writes about the simplicities of love, asking “What Is Love?”. During the song she asks, "is it borrowing a t-shirt?” or is it “reading over shoulders?”. It is many things! Apart fromthe personal lyrical content, the other prevalent thing in the song is the piano taking the lead. It also does soon the new single Winter Blues. The four-and-a-half-minute single is the album’s centrepiece. Incredibly subtle and incredibly beautiful, the song floats in a sombre key, intermittently dotted by Russack’s contemplations, “blame it on the winter blues”. The piano is also showcased on the album’s quieter moments: Like the Wind, Horses and the album’s stunning finale Never Before