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Interview Time With Emily Barker

To discuss the Album Fragile As Humans


Last Year in May 2024 Emily Barker released the album Fragile As Humans into this world, complete with descriptive human and animal observation, full to the brim with musical subtlety through precise instrumentation and new ways of expressing her voice and lyrics.

Living back in her homeland of Australia she has braved the well known chilly outlook in the UK to make the trip over to finally Tour the album properly.

I caught up with her amid rehearsals in what looked a cold and drafty studio, Emily bedecked in countless scarves and woolly protection.


RTS  "You are just popping over a month or so for some shows?"

Emily “We've just been rehearsing today. We start solo tomorrow night in Dumfries in Scotland, and then head to Dublin and Belfast, and then we start with the band on Saturday night, is it Saturday night, or, anyway, this week, in Bristol. It's all planned out, yeah”.


RTS “So some are with the band, and some are not. Do you have the same players as on the album”

Emily “No, they're not actually any of the players, because on the latest album I used the producer's session musicians. It'll just be drums and bass, and myself, so a trio mostly. Both the drummer and the bass player sing beautifully, so I've got three-part harmonies, and also they both play so well in particular the drummer, Rob, will also be playing synth on some songs, plus triggering samples as well. Then the bass player, Alex, will also be bowing some bass sometimes”.   


RTS “Starting from the early days, you came over to the UK back in 2002 now you have returned back to your homeland. What was the main driver for returning back to Australia?" 

Emily “Yeah, well, for a long time I'd thought about going back, but it's one of those things, the longer you stay in a place, the more embedded you are, and your friendships are like family. Also with the music, for me here is where most of my fan base are and where my career has been. It felt like too big a deal to up sticks and move back. And then when COVID hit and lockdowns happened and everything stopped we weren't able to tour with musicians, so many people weren't able to live the life that they had been leading. That made me  step back and evaluate everything and realise that I really missed my family. Also my dad is getting older and there's only so many years he'll be around. My partner and I at the time, this is quite personal, we were trying to have kids and it wasn't happening, so I wanted to be nearer to my family and my nieces and nephews and to be able to be an auntie after so many years away. So it was sort of personal reasons really that took me back there”.  



RTS “The newest album Fragile as Humans was mostly written during that time, it was really looking at the world and reassessing your position in it, is that fair to say? 

Emily “Yeah, definitely. So, it's an album that came from stillness and was very introspective. With Fragile as Humans, I felt like at the same time I was exploring this real inner world, it was very much speaking about our collective experiences and so therefore speaks to many people's emotional landscape of that time. But then moving forward as well, I was surprised in some ways, how much the songs just still translate and feel very of the moment, even though they were written during this strange time”.  


RTS  “This album came out last year in 2024. Is this tour to sort of reinvigorate interest in Fragile As Humans over here in the UK especially?”

Emily “ It's actually the headline tour for it…..So I did a record shop tour in May 24 when the album came out. I did that here, and they were solo shows, but like 20 minutes or something like that. Then lots of signing the album. In November, just gone, I did a support tour for King Creosote all over, which was great. But this is the headline tour for the album. Hopefully everyone's heard it now and soaked it up”.


 RTS “As I understand it, during the writing for this album you've changed some of your methods on how you're writing songs or progressing through songs and how they end up what have you changed?"

Emily “Definitely….  I mean, pretty much every time you write a song, there's something new that you're discovering or learning. For this album, I remember having a word written on a postcard that I pinned to my wall, which was “experiment”. I wanted to just take the songs, mostly in terms of the music of them, to places that I hadn't quite gone to before. I mostly did that through harmony, so thinking about how chords and notes relate to each other within a song. I did a lot of pushing those boundaries and also my skills as a composer. I tried to go beyond musically what I'd done before, sonically as well.

Then we brought that to the album production. When I was talking to my producer, Luke Patashnik, we really wanted to do something quite cinematic and also in this world, use quite a contemporary sort of palette. So there's lot of drones and synths and things which help to create that atmosphere of the album and make it quite cinematic, I think”.


 

RTS “Definitely,  I observe, though I've not ever been to Australia, the songs seem to stretch with the sounds and drone effects to conjure that stretch of emptiness, of the dreamlike expanse. Something I thought Icehouse did well on their second album but in more of a Rock way”. 

Emily “I love Icehouse!” 


RTS “They captured the essence of where they're from, if you know what I mean. It's not all like that, but there's a smidgen of that in this album, for sure”.

Emily “Oh, very cool. I love that. Yeah” 


RTS “You mentioned people, in the past, and I believe With Small We Start, isn't there someone, possibly your father mentioned?”

Emily “ Yeah, the first one is for my dad. Thinking about the whole song, it's about how we have influence in our immediate community, in our day to day, with our real life interactions. That's a real power, I think because we're so global in so many ways, but actually I think where change really can take hold is in these smaller, more humble beginnings, and in community. It's emphasising the importance of that, I suppose. One of the ways that I felt I could illustrate that was through my dad, because we grew up in this really small town, and the things that have always mattered to him are his community, and his veggie garden, and therefore food on the table, working with the earth and just the positive. Being good for the planet, and all these small, humble ways”.   







 RTS “Can I ask you about Wild to be sharing this moment, what was your thought process behind that song”.

Emily “That one came from observing people at a train station while I was waiting for my train. Just suddenly being struck by this idea”.


RTS “You were in England at that time, I'm guessing?”

Emily “I was at King's Cross Station. I was just people watching,  I was also listening to Bonnie Light Horseman's first album, and it was so moving. I was just having this realisation that everybody is each in their own universe and have their troubles, their joys, their desires, their sorrows, their history, what they've inherited from their parents and grandparents before them, like trauma and traits. Then thinking about how each person is vulnerable and that we all experience these same emotions, and then I zoomed out as well, the war in Ukraine had just started, so again, thinking about our vulnerability. Being close to that and then our fellow citizens in Ukraine, that song also applies to all wars. 

 There's always wars in the background, tragically. So the scale of the song is zooming in to individuals then zooming out to these collective experiences. Mostly I wanted to write a song about compassion and connection. Realising how we, day-to-day can affect somebody in Gaza or in Ukraine or in these war-torn places. How we manage to have those conversations so that the outcome is peace, for people personally. Recognising that we each have so much going on”. 





RTS “The title track Fragile as Humans is another song that stood out to me. Can I ask who is the person mentioned wearing the cap?” 

Emily “He's my childhood crush  for years and years and years, from when I was six, he left our school when I was 14 or something like that and we remained friends after that for a while”.


RTS “Do you still know him?”

Emily “I still know him, we're still friends, but we had I think 20 years or so of not being in contact. He appears a lot in the album because during COVID,  I got a message from his cousin saying that he was dying”.


RTS  “Oh, wow”.

Emily “Yeah, and we're the same age so a lot of the songs come from this. He's been one of the most important people in my entire life and I still dream of him”.




RTS “Does he know all this?”

Emily “ Yeah, he knows, yeah, yeah, yeah, he knows. He knew, he definitely knew at the time too. It was unrequited, but we were friends. There is a lasting effect of these sort of friendships or people that you love and admire”.  


RTS "On to TV and Soundtracks, have you got anything in the pipeline coming up?” 

Emily “Well, not soundtracks, but I've got a project which I can't actually fully announce yet, but I feel like it's similar to writing for TV or writing for film. If it's a project, then you're part of a whole team of people that are working together to create something beyond just yourself, where you can do whatever you like, write about whatever you like in whatever key and whatever chords. For film and television it's very much being in a conversation with the director, and for a project that is upcoming, it'll be responding to a brief as well...plus... working with some source material. You've got this material already and somebody's vision and you're trying to see that and understand it”.



EMILY BARKER – 2025 UK DATES 


23 Jan 2025 - BELFAST The Deer's Head (Out to Lunch Festival)

 

25 Jan 2025 - BRISTOL The Lantern

 

26 Jan 2025 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club

 

28 Jan 2025 - NEWCASTLE Cluny 2

 

30 Jan 2025 - LIVERPOOL St Michael-in-the-Hamlet

 

31 Jan 2025 - MANCHESTER Deaf Institute

 

01 Feb 2025 - LONDON Omeara

 

02 Feb 2025 - STROUD Sub Rooms

 

04 Feb 2025 - CAMBRIDGE Portland Arms

 

05 Feb 2025 - BRIGHTON The Prince Albert

 

06 Feb 2025 - TWYFORD St Marys Church

 

Tickets HERE

 

EMILY BARKER - NEW ALBUM:


‘FRAGILE AS HUMANS’ - OUT NOW



FOR MORE INFORMATION


https://www.emilybarker.com/








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