For her fourth album, Emma-Lee Moss has gone back to her roots, taking inspiration from a 2017 trip to Hong Kong, where she lived until she was 12.
While Moss has received acclaim for her musings on difficult relationships and break-ups, her expert lyricism is even more alive as she turns her gaze on herself, her home city, and the complex relationship between the two.
Her return coincided with the mid-autumn festival, which the delightful opener pays tribute to, and Chang-E is a masterclass in folk-pop story-telling as she recalls the legend of the moon goddess, which she heard as a child.
“Here our parents dreamed of escape / Now all their dreams are ours,” she sings on Okinawa/Ubud, as Far Eastern influences manifest themselves musically too, with xylophone beats joining delicate strings. Back in Brooklyn, Moss’s reflections continued, and her witty writing sparkles on A Window/O’Keeffe: “Love is an obsession that lives in my phone / When I let it die then I know I’m alone.”
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