Standing well on her own two feet, Emma Ruth Rundle has released the first single from her forthcoming solo album, due out May 20 on Sargent House. She is best known for her work in Red Sparowes and Marriages, but this first listen feels like a necessary endeavor. The opening is wistful and ghostly, as her voice and guitar stand solitarily in reverberant space. The sparse arrangement pierces straight to the heart and leaves no room for doubt that her melancholy cries for comfort and redemption are an exorcism of sorts. Gently in the background, the strings moan like a tortured soul calling from the grave for deliverance. Her beautifully tortured cry of "please deliver me from all the evil I’ve done to myself and deliver me to arms I know so well" acts as a prologue to the story that is to unfold through the rest of her album. If these goosebumps are telling, it is sure to be amongst the top in those year end lists. – Jacqueline Caruso
