“Winter Blues is the perfect summary of where I am at in my life: vulnerable, open hearted and at peace with my past”. Emma Russack.
Last week Melbourne singer-songwriter Emma Russack announced the release date for her fifth album Winter Blues, simultaneously unveiling its title track, a sparse and laid bare piano ballad that in abstract fashion captures the complex essence of love and loss. It follows up the understated beauty of what we know now to be its first single, ‘What Is Love’, a song that poses that central question, to which she never categorically gives an answer.
That in itself reflects not only where Russack finds herself in a personal sense but is also indicative that definitive answers to life’s great mysteries and conundrums are not always needed or even sought after. There is a sense of freedom in the solemnity existing in both tracks, a sense of coming to terms with the fact that existential uncertainties will always exist. Just contemplation in context is often enough.
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. Listen to ‘Winter Blues’ and ‘What Is Love’ below and pre-order the album here. It’s out July 5 through Osborne Again and Spunk Records.
Tracklist
1. Horses
2. What Is Love
3. Keeping My Cool
4. I Could Say
5. Winter Blues
6. Be Real
7. Follow My Heart
8. Like The Wind
9. Floating Seeds
10. Never Before
Winter Blues
Emma Russack (AUS)
From the forthcoming album, ‘Winter Blues’, Osborne Again/Spunk Records.
Audio Stream
What Is Love
Emma Russack (AUS)
From the forthcoming album, ‘Winter Blues’, Osborne Again/Spunk Records.
Audio Stream