tracks

No Last Call
Anyone
Hurt
Two Years
The Right Lie
Waiting For You
Burn Out
In This City
Walk, Don't Run
I Believe In You

notes

Emily Rodgers is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania based singer-songwriter. Rodgers performs both solo and with a full band. Her music has been compared to Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500, Cowboy Junkies, and Neil Young. Emily Rodgers lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is married to guitar player Erik Cirelli. She holds an MA in Literary & Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University and teaches college level literature and writing.

"The songs are unrushed, the vocals are haunting and the production is subtle. The music is melancholy and moody, and it’s not an accident. Collaboration looms large on this album, even beyond the booth. The songs are too strong to require much accompaniment, but the subtle complements of Megan Williams’ violin and Allison Kacmar Richards’ bass make the album feel intangibly whole. Not everybody can make melancholy work, but Rodgers nails it on this album." - Alex Gordon, Pittsburgh City Paper, June 8, 2016

Released June 1, 2016

Produced by Kramer
Engineered by J Vega at The Wilderness Recording Studio
Mixed & Mastered by Kramer at Noise Miami

Emily Rodgers - Vocals, Electric Guitar
Erik Cirelli - Acoustic and Electric Guitars
Megan Williams - Violin
Allison Kacmar Richards - Bass
Mark Lyons - Drums
Vince Camut - Pedal Steel
Kramer - Keyboards, Samples, Percussion

All songs by Emily Rodgers, New Jerusalem Music (ASCAP), except for:
"I Believe in You", written by Neil Young, published by Broken Arrow Music Corporation.

Artwork and Layout by Nick Cobler
Photography by Emily Rodgers

It’s clear from note one of Emily Rodgers’ new album, Two Years: she’s up to something a little different. Different from her past records, but different especially from so many of her contemporaries. In a world of indie-folk sameness, where epic and bombastic are the rule, Rodgers is deliberate and intense, quiet and bookish. And it's in its very quiet intensity that her music commands a listener’s full attention.

On paper, Rodgers’ music might seem like it would add up to folk or alt-country: A band with guitars, a pedal steel, some fiddles here and there. But on listening, you’re as likely to pick up on an undercurrent of shoegaze, chamber pop, even post-rock on Two Years. The violins oscillate under Rodgers’ melodies, more Dirty Three than country. The pedal steel soars. Rodgers’ voice, beautiful and world-weary, echoes.

On Two Years, her first album since 2009’s Bright Day, Rodgers worked with legendary producer Kramer, who was responsible for the sounds of first-generation shoegaze and slow-core innovators like Galaxie 500 and Low. (Kramer mixed and mastered Bright Day, and returned as producer this time around; he also produced two videos from the new album.) It’s fair to look at the album as a product of Rodgers’ unconventional writing -- she’s an English professor, and looks to literary sources for inspiration -- and Kramer’s sonic genius. Low comes to mind as a reference point; so does Tara Jane O’Neil.

Rodgers’ songs don’t traffic in clichés, and she doesn’t overdo it as a lyricist. While she avoids formula as a crutch, she isn’t afraid to meditate on a phrase, as, for example, she does with the titular line of album opener “No Last Call,” an expansive beauty that sets the mood for the rest of the record.

That Two Years is her first recording in nearly seven betrays the fact that Rodgers isn’t rushing things. Song by song, she avoids the temptation to try to cram too many words into a phrase; there’s a deliberate confidence in her delivery. Rodgers takes her words seriously, and wants you to, too. (And not just her own words -- the album closes with a haunting, otherworldly cover of Neil Young’s “I Believe In You” that turns the original on its head.)

Make no mistake: Emily Rodgers’ songs generally aren’t happy. But in their contemplative melancholy, there’s a thread of fearlessness. Uplift and bombast may be the rage these days, but as Emily Rodgers makes clear, there’s something to be said for courage, contemplation and taking the time to let the words set in. Why create more of the same when something a little different can turn out this beautiful?

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