- Avalon Emerson ducks out of dance music and resurfaces in an indie rock band—a potential risk that pays off well.
- Avalon Emerson started her 2020 DJ-Kicks mix with a curveball: a cover of The Magnetic Fields' "Long Forgotten-Fairytale." This was the first time listeners heard something other than dance music from Emerson, and it was the first time they heard her voice, too. The cover was a good indication of where her head was at around that time, when a planned production stint in LA was cut short. Instead, she moved up to the more remote locale of the Catskills, due north of New York City, the perfect place for her to try something new when DJing had all but dried up. All this spare time went into her debut album, & The Charm, where, naturally, Emerson throws another Uncle Charlie, swerving away from club music into new terrain—dream-pop—with an ambitious goal: writing timeless pop songs.
Arthur Russell, The Magnetic Fields and Cocteau Twins became Emerson's muses for & The Charm, which is musically soft and floaty, although there's a dark tint to her lyrics. "Astrology Poisoning" skips along with soft snares and a chirpy melody that feels like waves lapping up on a semolina-coloured shore. But when her equally soft voice comes in, she sounds cynical as she sings, "Closer to the sun / Just hit 31 / The ring ran out of fun / And now it's warm like bathwater." There's a duality to Emerson's wordplay, which talks about her feelings towards the touring-DJ life—how the shine has worn off—but also her fears about the inexorable rise of climate change. She also pokes fun at what she calls the "Z-list" celebrity status of DJs with lines like "another unreality star." The sleight-of-hand of Emerson's songwriting allows listeners to happily follow along before the deeper meaning hits home—just like how Emerson's Magnetic Fields hero Stephin Merritt loves to twist the knife over the prettiest of melodies.
Timeless pop songs are usually the kind immortalised in karaoke songbooks, with universal choruses and undeniable hooks. Karaoke is another running theme in Emerson's music. We saw it in the video for that Magnetic Fields cover, and it shows up on this LP with the playfully named "Karaoke Song." It's easy to picture a little dot skipping across Emerson's lyrics on screen to the light, prancing backing track: "Forgot and I don't want to know / and I don't care if you forgot me too / Forgotten is the way to go." And "Karaoke Song" isn't the only Karaoke-worthy song on & The Charm. The same images come to mind on "Entombed In Ice," especially in the middle-eight when Emerson adds a sing-along hook to the refrain: "While one door clo-ses / ba-da da da duh-dun, ba-da da da duh-dun / A-noth-er o-pens, ba-da da da duh-dun"—trailing off into a sax solo. Those ba-da da da duh-duns are cruisin' for drunken karaoke bruisin'.
The instrumental flourishes on & The Charm, like those sexy sax passages, are part Emerson but also part Nathan Jenkins, AKA Bullion, who executive-produced the record. On the opener "Sandrail Silhouette," cloudy pads gallop in slow motion alongside the jangly guitars and rich fluttering strings. The pads in particular feel markedly Bullion, reminiscent of his work on Carly Rae Jepsen's "Bends." And with both producers put together, the sum of these parts is as epic and wide-open as the Arizona desert landscape where Emerson grew up. The pair share an adventurous streak. Take "The Stone," the album's most outwardly melancholy cut and a nice moment of introspection, opening with organs that add a sombre undertone to Emerson's spoken word. In the mid-section Emerson's voice softens and gets caught in reverb, like a spirit floating above the violins that swoop between major and minor chords.
For much of & The Charm, you'd be forgiven for forgetting Emerson ever worked in dance music. But when the album dips into its latter half, her history starts shining through, starting with the dazzling intro of "Dreamline," which blends electronic touches with the dream pop stylings of her forebears. "Hot Evening" has the most explicit underground dance music references, with a skipping, garage-y undercarriage that nods to Todd Edwards and adds a gritty touch to match Emerson's Merritt-style deadpan on global warming. It's a welcome change-up that cleanses the palate after all the album's often epic and glittery earlier stages.
Avalon Emerson's appeal as a DJ and dance music producer has always been a blend of the familiar and the unknown, the glossy and the underrated. Be it the sparkly disco arpeggios of her most listened to dance tune, "One More Fluorescent Rush," or a DJ blend that brings Rosalia and her good friend Nathan Micay together—she understands that, often, the greatest euphoria comes in the glimmers of things we know popping up in unexpected places. Emerson's decision to duck out of dance music and resurface as an indie-electronica artist for her long-awaited debut album feels like a risk, but in its well-worn and world-weary approach to songwriting, it's also deeply familiar, almost comforting.
Tracklist01. Sandrail Silhouette
02. Entombed in Ice
03. A Vision
04. Astrology Poisoning
05. The Stone
06. Dreamliner
07. Hot Evening
08. Karaoke Song
09. A Dam Will Always Divide