New album for West Sussex choir director and singer-songwriter

SussexWorld

Emily Barden in conversation

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Greek Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely

00:06to speak to Emily Barton. Now Emily, who lives in Boston, exciting times. You have an album

00:11out, and goodness, the first album for 13 years, it's called Vapor Trails, and there's

00:17a real difference between this album and the last one. You were saying that the last one

00:21almost felt like it happened to you, this one is absolutely yours. Explain those sentiments,

00:28what do you mean by that? What I mean is, so yes, isn't this terrible, but here you go,

00:34here is the album Vapor Trails. What I feel is that I'm a little bit older, I'm 13 years

00:40further down the track, and this album is absolutely about my experiences of life, and

00:48what happens to you, and relationships, and when you get a bit more reflective as you get a bit

00:53older, and sort of look at things that happen in maybe a different way, and you interact with

00:57people in a different way, I think you look at the world with maybe slightly less confidence,

01:03and with more curiosity, and more questions. There's a lot of questions on this album,

01:09and in fact a lot of the songs were written maybe to help me process questions I had about life,

01:16love, the universe, and so it feels like a very different person writing this album,

01:22and I think I said to you before, it means I'm actually really proud of this album, because I

01:26feel like it's a true representation of me, exactly where I am right now, whereas the last

01:32one felt like something that I sort of had to do, because I had got a lot of favours and

01:39people offering me, oh you can have this studio, you can have these musicians, oh your song could

01:43sound like this, it was a lot of, oh you could, you could, and this one feels like I've gone,

01:48do you know what, no, this is what I want to say, this is what I've looked at around the world,

01:53and this is how I want it to sound, so it just does feel like a really internal album.

01:59Oh, and from the way you're talking about it, you say this is where you are in the world right now,

02:04it sounds like you're in a good place in the world right now.

02:08I am in a lovely place in the world right now, you know, I've been through some interesting

02:13things in the last couple of years, sort of, you know, personally, relationships, moving,

02:18and I've moved to Bosum, Bosum's lovely isn't it, but I've also, I've got a little house in Italy,

02:26at the top of a Tuscan hill that I go to, to paint and to write and to think, and that

02:33travels, and the reason it's called Vapour Trails is because I've spent a lot of time

02:37looking at the sky, both at the top of my hill in Italy, I live in the top of a building in Bosum,

02:45Bosum has remarkable skies, you probably know, but down at the harbour, the sun sets, the sun

02:50rises, and you can see, you can just see a lot, and so Vapour Trails seemed like a really nice title

02:58about coming and going and moving and transition and things crossing, intersection.

03:05It sounds great, and curiously, after 13 years since the last one, this one happened very

03:09quickly, absolutely everything, the writing, the recording, the releasing, 18 months,

03:1518 months, yeah, absolutely, and that was deliberate, I did have to give myself a bit of a

03:20kicking to make sure that I kept on course, and actually, a famous singer-songwriter called

03:26Boo Hewardine, who wrote Patience of Angels for Eddie Reader, he's responsible for this being

03:31an album and not an EP, because he heard the EP, which was five tracks, and he rang me and he said,

03:37this isn't an EP, this is an album, if you don't finish this, you're going to be really cross,

03:42so I carried on. He was flying, he said to me, his exact words were, okay, those five

03:49tracks are great, he says, but I want to know what's on the other side, this is a man who speaks

03:53in vinyl. Fantastic, well, congratulations on the album, sounds fantastic, look forward to hearing

04:00it. Thanks so much, I mean, it's available on CD form for anybody that's sort of a CD persuasion,

04:05at Harbour Records in Emsworth, they're stocking it, and also you can get it from me at gigs,

04:10but it's also available on iTunes and YouTube and Spotify as a downloadable and streamable thing,

04:16so hopefully you can listen to it in whatever medium you like. Not vinyl yet!

04:21Maybe one day. Fantastic, lovely to speak to you.

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