As digital production techniques have proceeded to make it easier and easier to make larger, more luxurious and ambitious ideas come to life on an increasingly modest budget, the idea of simplicity has become missing in pop more and more. That so many artists have embraced the possibilities offered by digital production platforms is perfectly understandable – who wouldn't take the opportunity to make their dream album if they could? – but sometimes a simple sound can be more affecting than an incredible one could ever hope to be. Skeptics who scoff at such a possibility need look no further than Aaron Embry's debut solo album (that is, apart from his band Amnion), Tiny Prayers to hear that fact in perfect evidence.
While it is possible to hear hints of the new wave of folk and Americana in Tiny Prayers (not surprising, given that Embry did a tour of duty as the pianist for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros through 2010 and 2011), no one would ever really try to lump this album in with that scene; in many ways, Tiny Prayers is simpler and truer to the spirit of folk tan any of the community of scenesters with acoustic guitars peddling “Americana”; stripped down dramatically, this album wears its heart visibly for listeners to find it.
Listeners will know they're getting something different (more genuine perhaps) from what “new folk” has made them accustomed to from the moment the sleepy rhythm and pleading melody of “Moon Of The Daylit Sky” begins to materialize at the opening of Tiny Players. There, ideas which have existed in both folk and country music for decades but fell out of favor around 1987 and became forgotten around the same time Ani DiFranco, Jewel and the Lillith Fair crowd rewrote the book on folk come rushing back and sit vibrantly in the song's foreground. Embry's shimmering vocal as well as the loping guitar figure sit warmly with listeners, and they'll find themselves slipping into a perfectly relaxed rhythm with the song as it works its way through.
That sort of relaxed, sepia tone mood holds up as pianos get introduced with “Raven's Song” amd they shimmer like the trails from fireworks right into the soulful harmonica of the album's title track before resting at the end of the album's Act 1 in “When All Is Gone…”.
The exercise from the beginning to mid-point of Tiny Prayers alone is the definition of beauty and could easily make a satisfying EP in its own right, but as “Ode To 'If',” “Good-Red-Road Man” and “No Go” tread their way through, listeners will get the sense that there is a much larger journey at work in this run-time than they assumed. There are shadows of trepidation here that no one would have expected, and they prove to add a fantastic new depth to the album.
As the record begins into its final sequence, it settles into a set of dew-eyed tracks which discover love and make for the ideal thematic conclusion following the ruminations that listeners have already heard. The last three tracks on the album (“To The One,” “So I Turn” and “Your Heart And Mine”) are a perfect way out of this most beautiful album and may serve as the perfect introduction for all the music that Aaron Embry is to release following Tiny Prayers. Like Plato's cave allegory, the first two thirds of Tiny Prayers, while beautiful, reside in darkness. That darkness begins to recede toward the end of the record though, until “Your Heart And Mine” appear bathed in love, warmth and light; certainly a very heartening end.
Artist:
www.weareeachother.com/
www.myspace.com/372211684
www.facebook.com/aaronembrysongwriter
www.twitter.com/aaronembrytweet
Album:
Tiny Prayers is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
