No, we’re not entering Lovecraft Country with this new single from Emily Scott Robinson, it is not those Old Gods, this is not Southern Gothic with the Gothic writ large and there’s not the slightest hint of a chant of “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh…” anywhere in the lyrics. Not even if you play it backwards (we checked, so there’s no need to).
Rather Emily Scott Robinson is alluding to playful, perhaps not benevolent, spirits who may be trying to fool her: “are you a trick of the memory that the Old Gods are playing on me?” she queries as she dreams of a love who is far from home. There’s a sense of longing in the voice, which the simple accompaniment just serves to emphasize.
‘Old Gods‘ is taken from Robinson’s new album ‘American Siren‘ (out October 29th), of which she has said: “I think that the thread running through the album is those things that call to us, and how we can’t resist that call. It’s about the siren songs that come up through our lives. It is bigger and riskier and more expansive than my last collection. It feels like I wrote some songs that I’m going to grow into as I continue to perform them. They’re excavating some deeper stuff than I’ve touched on before, I think they will have a healing quality for people who listen.”
Beautiful! Thanks for highlighting this one!