With just voice and acoustic guitar, this EP by Nebraska's Ember Schrag contains four sparse, yet lyrically complex tales of "desert abandonment, child sacrifice and strange guardians".
With Influences which include Leonard Cohen and Canadian poet-essayist Anne Carson, her words are steeped in biblical metaphors of judgement, betrayal and rash promises.
"Now once a year in the hills the women go to mourn, The beautiful maiden of Jephthah who will dance with them no more" she sings on the title track which tells of the Israeli custom deriving from the Old Testament tale of how Jephthah sacrificed his only daughter to honour a vow to God in return for victory against the Ammonites.
This is not your standard subject matter but, then again, these are no standard folk songs.
The significance of each are as intriguing as they are elusive but she has the knack of drawing in the listener with surreal yet arresting opening lines. The first song , La Maria, begins with: "I had a peppermint stuck in my throat, I had an idea of love as something that people owe" while I Ain't A Prophet has the couplet "I've been stung by a jellyfish, I may or may not get to the bottom of this".
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You know from such words that it is fruitless to search for straight narratives so it is better to let the mystery be and savour a voice that has a similar, slightly forlorn, quality as singers like Nevada City's Alela Diane and Mariee Sioux.
On the short closing song, April Night, she sings of the "desolate Midwest" and these songs evoke a desert wilderness that is forbidding and bleak but also possessed of a strange poetry.
Ember Schrag's Website
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