Liz Stringer

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all…” – Emily Dickinson

The opening line of Emily Dickinson’s short poem ‘‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers’ inspired the central image of Emily Barker’s new single ‘Feathered Thing’, written while she navigated cumulative grief.

When Barker was first introduced to producer Luke Potashnick (Gabrielle Aplin, Jack Savoretti, Katie Melua) in May 2022, she brought with her a full album’s worth of songs. But after visiting Potashnick’s storied studio, The Wool Hall and hearing his ambitious production ideas, she was inspired to write one more song.

“I also needed to process some heavy news” she comments. Barker and her husband Lukas Drinkwater had been trying to start a family. Following a couple of failed IVF cycles (and other “starts that we’d lost”), they investigated adoption and had decided to relocate to Australia to be closer to Barker’s family.

“It felt like we couldn’t work out what we wanted, but we finally reached a point where we both felt at peace with not having kids,” Barker recalls. “It had been an incredibly intense time, coinciding with a house move and the pandemic.”

This is a 14+ event

Brudenell Social Club

Emily Barker

Nostalgia - Wallander Version

Gigs

Leeds

Emily Barker is an award-winning singer-songwriter, best known as the writer and performer of the theme to the hugely successful BBC crime drama ‘Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh.

Her last album, 2020’s A Dark Murmuration of Words, was produced by Greg Freeman and recorded at StudiOwz, a converted chapel in the Welsh countryside. Lyrically probing, by turns both dark and optimistic, Barker searches for meaning through the deafening clamour of fake news and algorithmically filtered conversation, delivering a timely exploration of the grand themes of our age. It garnered widespread acclaim, with Uncut calling it ‘…a kind of Australian equivalent of PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake‘.

Barker has released music and toured as a solo artist as well as with various bands and collaborations, most notably her long association with Frank Turner, and has written for TV and film, including composing the soundtrack for Jake Gavin’s lauded debut feature Hector starring Peter Mullan and Keith Allen.

Fragile as Humans is scheduled for release on 3 May 2024 through Everyone Sang/Kartel Music Group. The album will also feature earlier singles: the vast, cinematic Wild to be Sharing This Moment and the meditative, crestfallen Loneliness.

Tour support comes from Liz Stringer - one of Australia’s most admired and versatile songwriters and instrumentalists. Hailing from Melbourne and based in London, Stringer counts seminal artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Midnight Oil as fans.

Liz Stringer

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