5 out of 5

Label: Drag City

Producer: Scout Niblett

Interesting.  Another Scout record that gave me the full run of responses… that I had to listen to two handfuls of times before I arrived at an understanding.  According to Allmusic, this record comes on the heels of a breakup for Scout, and it’s apparent at every moment.  The cover is the most in your face image she’s used, and the inclusion of her name in the album title give the disc, just from the exterior, an extra impact of honesty and forthrightness.  Next detail: self produced.  After a run of working with Albini, Ms. Niblett assumes all responsibility.  And then when track one plays, our opening lyrics: “I think I’m gonna buy me a gun,” are more direct and literal (and clearly enunciated) than those found on the majority of Scout tracks that come to mind.  Often the breakup album (or ‘event’ album – a parent dying, a dog gets an extra butt, whatever) is the soul-searching release, where the artist becomes more ‘open’ and digs deep and yadda yadda.  Scout did the digging on the previous ‘Calcination,’ on which she pretty much tore herself apart and said fuck off to her listeners as she dredged her thoughts through dark, dark waters.  And she’s been open and insightful for more of her career, penning ditties that ranged from let-loose anthems to bi-polar explosions of noise to acoustic explorations and so on.  So ‘It’s Up to Emma’, how do you dig deeper to express yourself when faced with this experience?  She ends up going the opposite direction.  ‘Emma’s 9 tracks are all legitimate songs, with verse-chorus-verse structures and layered guitars and levelly mixed instruments – going against the grain of Albini’s reverbing her songs to hell and back, pushing the harsh tones front and center, and Scout’s songwriting sensibilities leaning toward a rough, wandering patchwork feel than anything traditional.  So I sorta hated the disc at first, because I said – blech – this is radio friendly girl music fare, not weird Scout that I expect.  And all the lyrics make sense, and are about boys.

But it’s a short listen, so I let it run out and repeat.

And I then I started really digging that opener, ‘Gun,’ because of how straight-forward it is.  It’s perhaps the first Scout song to hit me on several levels – when the drums kick in, her little enraged yelp between verses, and the rather scathing lyrics… it started to click.  It’s like Scout’s version of Shellac’s ‘Prayer to God,’ a heavy-handed eff you note, shaking out the anger.  And then, of course, the rest of the disc started to open up.  Many of the songs stick to only a few lines, and it’d be easy to feel exclude since they’re about ‘My Man’ or the typical tale of the wishy-washy guy, but they don’t exclude because she’s not trying to say anything poignant or preachy or new.  As Scout has always done, she’s just singing and writing from her heart.  This time, it’s just very focused.

I’ll admit that I get lost on a lot of Scout Niblett records toward their tail end.  But not on ‘It’s Up to Emma’.  By varying between positive ‘I’m glad this is over’ and negative ‘I wonder if…’ songs (with appropriately varying tempos), it keeps the listener engaged and totally understanding of the confusion and frustration of these fuckin’ situations we’ve all been in, in some way or another.  Yes, there’s a cover of TLC’s ‘No Scrubs,’ and I normally call bullshit on stupid covers of totally-not-this-genre songs, but you’ll probably be shocked – as I was – at how natural the track seems, and how it comes off as being written for the album.

Maybe I could nitpick some fairly flat production that I sense was serviced well by Carl Saff’s mastering, but I’d be making that up because I’ve never been in a studio before so what the duff do I know.  I think, had this been Scout’s first album, it wouldn’t matter as much.  She comes by this style honestly, earned over several years and albums of establishing her own little world of weird folky rocky pop.  I don’t think I want another album like this since it works so perfectly in isolation from her other work, and I’m not saying I wish for constant tragedy in her life, but I’m thankful that events percolated into this lil’ gem of sound and words.