Empress - Tea for Two (Misplaced Music, 2003)

Piano, guitare, douceur fragile et lenteur mélancolique en provenance de Leeds au menu de ce single. Le tout est surtout habité par la voix de Nicola Hodkinson, qu'on retrouvera plus tard accompagnant le duo Remote Viewer. Ces quatre titres exclusifs semblent être la dernière trace discographique du groupe à ce jour.

Empress
Tea For Two
7'' Misplaced Music MM05 (UK, 09-2003)

a1. People Do Worse
a2. Drink the Town Dry
b1. Tea for Two
b2. Tutto Solo

Note : Delicately frail 4-track offering from Empress that oozes tear stained lullabies and deep melancholia like it was going out of fashion. 'Tea for Two' has the same kind of icy fragility that's more associated with the likes of Mum, clockwork toy electronics recalling early Plone quietly unfurl growing in stature from a whisper to a murmur all the time Nicola Hodkinson's softening vocals caressing the surface. 'Tutto Solo' is both haunting and tragic sounding so much so that you'll find it difficult to resist giving it a re-assuring cuddle. Rustic chords and a listless piano with the merest of clicks and shuffles flutter elegantly catching cold in the winters gaze. So sparsely arranged is 'People do worse' that you'll literally be heart breaking on the spot, shyly beautiful but painfully sorrowful as the near still melodies almost pick at your emotions. Concluding with 'Drink the town dry' that courts with child like melodies lovingly lost in their own beguiling magic, it's enough to make a grown man weep and I should know. All in all think of a docile Broadcast being remixed by Boards of Canada and Low in the background fooling with the resulting tapes. (Losing Today)

Ce qu'en disait le label :
Empress are one of the most fragile, heart wrenching bands to have emerged from Leeds well, ever. They made a series of fine LPs and 7"s on 555 a few years back (which often got them compared to Low) but following an album on Stephen Pastel's Geographic imprint the band has laid low. What is certain now though is that their new songs or the equal and quite possibly the better of anything they've done before. (Misplaced Music)

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