Name: Exile In The Outer Ring
Brand: EMA

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

CDSLANG50121

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "CDSLANG50121"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2017-08-25

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Redeye

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

4250506822248

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "4250506822248"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

LPSLANG50121LTD

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "LPSLANG50121LTD"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

Extended format: Yes

Indie Only Red Vinyl

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "Indie Only Red Vinyl"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

4250506822637

{"blocks": [{"data": {"text": "4250506822637"}, "type": "paragraph"}]}

1 / Extended format: Yes / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Genre US

Rock-Pop

Label US

After the success of 2011’s Past Life Martyred Saints and 2014’s prophetic The Future’s Void, Ema retreated to a basement in Portland, Oregon – a generic apartment complex in a non-trendy neighbourhood, with beige carpeting and cheap slat blinds. Now, she returns, with a portrait of The Outer Ring: A pitch-black world of dark night highways, American flags hung over basement windows, jails and revival meetings and casinos and rage. In a year dominated by white working-class alienation and anger, Ema – a Midwesterner who never lost her thousand-yard stare - has delivered an album that renders Middle American poverty and resentment with frightening realism and deep empathy. The album, co-produced with Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, is a return to Ema’s roots in the noise-folk outfit Gowns, whose 2007 album Red State prefigured many of Exile’s core themes, along with its mix of stripped-back folk (Always Bleeds, originally a Gowns song), spoken word (Where the Darkness Began) and noise epics (Breathalyzer). The album is unique in its mingling of gender politics with American working-class anxiety. The voices we hear in these songs - druggy, surly societal outcasts; Byronic nihilists bringing down fire - speak to a kind of rebellion that’s typically reserved for men, and the archetype of the “dirtbag teenage boy” dominates the album. The result is a deeply personal, confrontational, but ultimately redemptive album from a quintessentially American artist at the peak of her form.

Exile In The Outer Ring

Music US