Emily & the Faves

Paul Simpson's ( Wild Swans / Teardrop Explodes) review

My new favourite Liverpool band, Emily and The Faves played at The Ship and Mitre pub a few nights ago.


On paper The Faves shouldn’t work, songs refuse to conform, speed up and slow down and fuse genres (namely post-punk with early brit prog) but with songs averaging 2 minutes -30 seconds and eccentric arrangements that always keep you guessing, these low-res sonic home-videos take you unawares and excite your brain like cocaine encephalitis. The progressive bass and brilliantly economic jazz tinged drumming perfectly propel Emily Lansley’s informed and cliché free florid visions and when she abandons a song after 20 seconds because she ‘doesn’t feel like playing it’, we understand; no matter how irreverent the inter song banter and smiles, the Faves are clearly serious about their music. ....


If you have to have a signpost, think the quaint eccentricity of Stina Nordenstam meeting the quirkier end of the 1975-1976 New York scene – you know, Charles Dodgson’s Alice In Wonderland fronting a marginally less commercial CBS Demo era Talking Heads. Em’s fabulously non-conformist guitar playing - an unusually clean and thin sounding Stratocaster - is central to the Fave’s sound and her simultaneously innocent and knowing voice and strangely affecting lyrics seal the deal. ....

Check out the vaguely oriental sounding - ‘Sometimes’ on their My Space. http://www.myspace.com/emlansley.....


Emily and The Faves play Liverpool’s Mathew Street Festival on August 31st and at Static on the 25th September supporting the lovely Candie Payne. I tried pasting in their artwork and photos at this point but got one of those pissy 'Violation of My Space Terms' notices. Shame as the Faves naive and opiated artwork is a great foil to the music. This time next year they will be a Festival draw, I can see it. A@R dept idiots take note.
- Paul Simpsons personal blog page

Review from losingtoday.com - indie music online

Hailing from Liverpool - and another Mersey based ensemble for you all to get in flap about, describing themselves ‘psyche popsters’ and supplying a positive shopping list of influences that pretty much includes everyone and even begrudgingly concedes to the feint skip of heartbeats to ‘some’ ELO - we’re not sure whether they’ve actually released anything so far (we suspect not) but judging by the six treats found looming here it shouldn’t be long before the inkies start sniffing around and professing them to be the ones to watch. And who’d blame them for Emily and the Faves do a rather fetching line in affectionately drilled breezy sun kissed pop that sits loosely somewhere between the light headed kookiness of Free Design (especially on ‘Darth’) and the pastel pop of the Shop Assistants and the Sundays. Gorgeously lo-fi in delivery and tailored with a simplistic and mellow albeit catchy pop thrill, these glinting and delicately woven breezy wafts of reclined shimmer toned tender psyche (there’s six of them here) are calibrated with one fond eye on the 60’s via the sounds of West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and the other found slightly dozing amid a spangled twee tweaked brew drawn from the essences of the Primitives, Strawberry Switchblade the Siddeleys (none more so than on ‘I never saw’) and Frente (you don’t believe me huh - then tune into which asides its willowy care freeness reveals a somewhat neat nod towards to ’the Smiths’ era Marr riffmanship something similarly echoed on ‘I never saw‘). We here are quite admittedly partial to the heart fluttering day-glo motifs that attach to the perky ’following you’ with its curiously dreamily skewed folk hue and melodic framing that strangely recalls old ‘outlandos’ era Police flip sides. All said and done though best moment comes courtesy of ‘golden hair’- a gorgeously honeycombed treat braided by all manner of lysergic jangles, summer breezed lazy lilts, cutely attractive hooks and cut with a deliriously off set dizziness best savoured for wig flipped moments while your reclining somewhere blissfully watching the world race by.



- Indie music on line: Losingtoday.com

"Fabulous songs walk a tightrope between driving post-punk minimalism and beautifully crafted other worldliness.....a band to be cherished and unique on a world scale not just a Liverpool one..."

Barry Sutton (ex The La's) - liverpool.com magazine