Stella Emmett - Admirer

Ok, so its summer, you’re daydreaming and as a music fan, in your dreams comes music that is a cross between the ‘classic’ 4AD sound and The Broadcast sans samples. Sounds like a daydream, right? Well, actually if those sounds seem a bit too real, then you might be listening to Stella Emmett’s new album, Admirer.

Now Emmett (nee Kortchmar) and Mike Dvorscak, her co-producer and collaborator on the album seem to have thought out the concept for this album exactly like that - a mid-summer (day)dream. Actually, it doesn’t seem, it is exactly the concept. I mean, there’s even a track called “Day Dream” here. As Emmett puts it, “listening back to Admirer now, I feel like I made it serve as a daily life soundtrack for people. I wanted to create an album that was at once deeply personal and about my actual life but also a sort of sound palette people could put on at parties, or listen to on the train, or listen to while cooking dinner or even while shopping at IKEA, thus the descriptor "IkeaCore".  It’s an easy listening album that comes from moments in my life that weren’t always easy." 

So hazy, perfectly set, lightweight electro-pop 4AD/The Broadcast style should be called IkeCore? As far as I’m concerned, why not? Particularly when it sounds so easy on the ear and all you need is a ham and cheese toast sandwich and a very cold beer to go along.

Mind you, to come up with music like this that actually sounds good and has its substance at the same time is an excruciating building process, it is no wonder it took Emmett and Dvorscak two years to construct Admirer. And it is all evident in the tracks like “Out Of Town”, “Final Fantasy” and “Calvin Klein” - delicately constructed and executed pop, usually one of the hardest things to achieve in modern music. And Emmett has done it this time around.