Emma Swift paints with subdued blue tones in slow, deliberate strokes. Indeed, listening to her new album The Resurrection Game is less like processing a collection of songs and more like getting to know the shapes and shades of a melancholy painting.
“Meet me at the station / where the roses are in bloom,” Swift sings over sweeping strings and low saxophones in “Signing off With Love.” “I’ll be dressed in a dead woman’s dress / and an actress’s perfume / with everything I own in a little case with wheels.” It’s a cinematic scene, rich with fatalism and doom–a mood Swift creates time and again on The Resurrection Game. “Is this how the end of the world is supposed to feel?” she asks, sounding more curious than upset.
