Raised on a small farm where the Midwest meets the South, Emily Hines crafts earnest indie rock with a twangy, unruly air. These Days, Emily’s first album for Keeled Scales and her initial offering to a wider world, features nine songs thoughtfully recorded to cassette from a tiny house in South Nashville.
These Days traces Emily’s progression as a twenty-something seeking love and meaning in late-stage capitalism. The songs play like a stack of Polaroids on the coffee table, candid and nostalgic.
Emily wrote her first songs with her brother at the tender age of 7 as a welcome home present to their sick mother. That initial experience instilled a passion for the honesty, compassion, and transformation that songwriting can offer.
After writing most of the album during an interlude of organic farming in Ohio and Kentucky, Emily quickly began playing shows around Nashville, connecting with a warm collective of like-minded musicians that eventually led her to her producer and partner, Henry Park. This quiet blossoming of community was powerful and formative, informing her writing process and eventually connecting her to her band – a rotating cast of generously talented musicians including Liv Greene, Holden Bitner, and John-Ruben Medina. Drawn particularly to improvisation and collaboration, Hines and her band shaped the songs over countless gigs and rehearsals.
The recording process was joyful and experimental, initially with very few expectations of the outcome. Trusting the power of embodied presence in a performance, they recorded live takes of her voice and guitar to cassette, which were then layered upon by her band, who added drums, cello, and more.
The resulting collection makes for something truly special; rich and decadent but also earthy and cracked. Emily prioritized creating a recording that feels human and present, and the outcome is palpable throughout These Days. At times we’re right there in the room with Emily, up close and deeply personal, at other points it’s as if you’re straining to hear from the outside listening in; ear to the wall, notes carried and caught in the breeze.
“We were drawn to the 4-track because it constrains the urge for perfectionism and encourages authenticity to the moment,” Emily explains. “What you get is what you get, the 4-track doesn’t afford you to get surgical about the details – and that can be really freeing.”
‘Cowgirl Suit’ epitomizes that captured atmosphere, setting the tone for all that follows. Unfiltered and unvarnished, the stripped-back sound is immediately arresting, the subtle ballad weaving a mesmerizing pattern.
‘My Own Way’, the album’s opener, offers a brighter shade, a fuller sound. The shuffle of drums and weaving cello uplifts the vocal. “I was noticing myself slipping back into old routines when what I wanted was to focus on the future and rid myself of anxieties that were weighing me down. It was a reminder that there’s freedom in not knowing what’s around the corner, freedom in the things I don’t know.”
Elsewhere, ‘All Of Our Friends’ is perhaps the album’s musical centerpiece. Golden and fully-formed it feels both timely and timeless, an intimate rumination about wanting to pursue a relationship but being held back by the baggage we all carry with us. “If all of it comes out just like you intended won’t you be a little bored and wishing that it didn’t?” Emily sings, working through the anxiety of a new relationship to try and find enjoyment in the mystery.
It's a theme that continues to raise its head through these songs; the push and pull between doing what we’re told and staying in our comfort zone, versus discovering ourselves and who we really are through the act of letting go, through choosing to be brave and embrace the unknown that hovers in the distance. As a debut album, These Days is a notable accomplishment; as a collection of heart-stirring country songs, it’s quietly, patiently, remarkable.
(Tom Johnson)
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