| Slantmagazine |
 Originally released in late 2007 on the smaller Double Negative label, Emily Jane White's Dark Undercoat is a solemn trek down familiar roads, its hushed, dusky style of storytelling recalling the subdued side of PJ Harvey, with lyrical roots stemming from a common pool of reconstituted American gothic. White's presentation may be mundane, starkly serious treatments of gloomy stories about violent death and love gone wrong, but she's saved from bargain-bin neo-folk by her voice, its intimate, entrancing quality, and the overall subtlety of presentation. From the slim acoustic strum of "Sleeping Dead" to the darkly reverent "Bessie Smith," White references folk, blues, and country (a vocal twang here, a blues riff there), but despite these nods, the music sits ensconced in another familiar category: the morose songstress who invokes acoustic Americana dread while never raising her voice. It's never in doubt that White is working with overly handled props, her songs filled with Biblical allusions and a grim fascination with the politics of murder. This can be detractive, as with "Wild Tigers I Have Known," written for the Cam Archer film of the same name. The song beautifully employs a delicate piano line, but inevitably falters thanks to an inability to wrench actual emotion from the dried-out lyrical stock material White employs. But when striving for inspired simulacrum, keeping her inflection even and stirring up a quiet, ghostly pallor, her music falls into a sublimely trance-like state. The vocal style is small but hypnotic, and the song's gloomily downcast tone, full of dark cello and spectral piano, suits it. Harvey is a definite influence here, but only one of many, and as far as rehashes go, White's is toward the top, an eerily effective collection which plays its act straight enough for us to ignore its familiarity....full text |
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| Wearsthetrousers |
The debut album from San Franciscan Ms White has been hailed by many as a new genre of ‘dark-folk’, which is an accurate enough description. However, although one might think that this makes her somehow different, what Dark Undercoat conceals may well disappoint those looking to find someone who stands out in the very small niche that is singing and songwriting. While White delivers an almost faultless vocal, it sounds very much like Chan Marshall’s; while her songs may have a sinister edge, they are, at times, a bit too reminiscent of Nick Cave; and while good ol’ Forrest Gump proclaimed “simple is as simple does”, there’s something just a bit dull about the simplicity of White’s songs.
Her press office might argue that White has the passionate melancholy of Billie Holiday in her heyday, but no track on this album displays a quality quite so classic. The opening ode to blues queen Bessie Smith sets a rather desolate tone to the point of being dismal, a theme which continues throughout. Often bleak can be beautiful, but here it amounts to little more than just plain depressing. “And you know I’m evil now / and you shout it loud and proud / singing ‘Born In The USA’”, White drones sorrowfully on ‘Hole In The Middle’, and without any particular meaning. Is this a political statement about how terrible it is to be American or is she a fan of Bruce Springsteen? There is nothing to suggest either, as the singer merely sounds frustratingly bored....full text |
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| Pensatos |
From the opening chords of ‘Bessie Smith’, Emily Jane White takes you on a folk trip across bluesy watered Dark Undercoat. If there were ever an album to allow one’s mind to speculate, then the San-Franciscan’s reverie debut would be up there. Helming this voyage is in large White’s vox; so soothing that I’d stretch to say that the best defense against a grizzly attack in the forest would be a piano, acoustic guitar and her singing away until the coast was clear. Of course she is accompanied with the sounds of John Courage on upright, Ross Harris drums, Shon Meckfessel on acoustic bass and Muir playing the cello, which added altogether with White singing, playing piano and on some tracks strumming a guitar work majestically. To be blatantly honest Dark Undercoat is ‘mood’ music, because when all is said and done, and the album’s over, you’re going to find yourself in a dreamy place reciting lyrics.
The opening of ‘Blue’ sends one back to their childhood - marching pink elephants from Dumbo and all the masked insecurity that went with it. Much of the offerings do little to drift from a proven formula of safe and sound by relying on White’s vocal power rather than challenging it. Undercoat’s dull shine is that it never finds out what it would be like to drive any song into third gear; as if she’s doing forty in the express lane on the highway. Sure, we all want to listen to something subtle and soothing like ‘Wild Tigers I Have Known’ and ‘Two Shots to the Head’ - but the girth of Dark Undercoat repeats much of the same. In the song ‘Sleeping Dead’ White presents a southern feel, along with ‘Bessie Smith’, at home in any blues saloon across the country. In shining moment ‘The Demon’, White manages to find her center; matching her voice to the piano so well the lyrics start to wash over the less clean moments of its peers....full text |
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