4 out of 5

Label: Too Pure

Produced by: Steve Albini

AND THEN…?

We didn’t really know what to expect of Emma Niblett.  Her debut was very much in line with the folky, occasional oddball output of label Secretly Canadian, and then there was the rather off-putting I Conjure EP, but, hey, we forgive experimentation on EPs, and it gave way to the un-cuted, Albini-ed I Am, which was exactly the proclamation its title suggested.  So what next?  What should we think of Niblett going to Too Pure – home of the oft-compared-to PJ Harvey’s landmark Dry album – and now facing away from the viewer on the cover in a puzzlingly discrepant (given the disc’s vaguely astrological / ethereal imagery) safety vest…?

But Albini is still there.  And sure, he’s the recorder of any and many, but when he sticks with an act, it generally suggests there’s something he’s hanging around for.  With Scout, it’s proven (for us following along at home, and so we’ll assume for Steve, pressing producer buttons in a living room somewhere) to be her mesmerizing whims, following them to any given conclusion – be it furious, distortion blazing stomps or delicate acoustic ballads or, sometimes occasionally, to ruin – once Niblett really started going anywhere, which I’d say sorta started here, we could stop asking what to expect when a new disc arrived and just let it work its magic.

Kidnapped By Neptune, while a little longer in the tooth than I Am, finds some higher highs by just letting it all hang out.  Songs halt abruptly and shift into marching drum beats; lyrics arrive shouted in a frenzy and carefully and considerably whispered / sung.  Delicate notes compose something of a theme that winds through many of the songs, shifted lower and slower and sped up and punked out or, at one point, classical-ed on a piano.  Other key sounds haunt moments of the disc, making it a somewhat richer recording than most of Scout’s guitar / bass / drums compositions, but this isn’t the ol’ overblown, endless-instrument list album: when those extra appear, they appear out of necessity, weighing down a moment or track just so it can get stripped away minutes later for just beats and a voice.

The fits and spurts of fear and confirmations make the disc ultimately unwieldy after its hour runtime – according to wiki, at the time, Niblett really didn’t feel like she “knew who she was,” and that listening experience would seem to be the evidence – but the bulk of Kidnapped By Neptune is enthralling, and undeniably impassioned from start to finish.