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iTUNES! chooses local Indie darling Emily Wells!

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Contributed by: Tracie Jackson on 9/26/2007

She was chosen by ITUNES as an "Indie Spotlight Star," featured on NPR and released the whimsically titled "Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks" to critical acclaim.

Now indie darling Emily Wells will make a rare solo appearance, headlining at Hotel Café at 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27. Emily will also play with her band in Venice at the Abbott Kinney Street Faire at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 30, before heading back into her studio where she is recording a series of Modern Day Symphonies.

Check out Emily at www.emilywellsmusic.com or www.myspace.com/emilywells.

Emily is an anomaly among musicians, most of who spend their careers striving for a major label deal. Before she was old enough to vote, a major label was courting Emily, two music-publishing companies were competing for the rights to her songs and she was recording with award-winning producers.

By the time she was legally buying her first drink, however, Emily had decided to choose a different path, and with true indie ethos, packed up and moved from New York, leaving in her wake a lucrative deal from a major label, the renowned producers, recording studios and a manager.

During that period of her life, Emily had been offered everything that most musicians want. Everything except what she, as an artist, needed most - creative control.

Wells, recognized as a child prodigy, is a multi-instrumentalist with a mellifluous, soulful voice, compared by some to Billie Holiday, who consistently creates gorgeous lush sonic landscapes imbued with intelligent and emotive lyrics.

Currently living in Highland Park, Emily wrote, produced, recorded and mixed "Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks" in her own recording studio.

On this record, Emily successfully combines her myriad talents to create what is being hailed as her best work to date. The addition of an upright bass player and a drummer compliment the rich musical arrangements that include Emily on guitar, violin, piano, Hammond organ, banjo, xylophones, and glockenspiel. The 14 dynamic tracks on "Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks" give a glimpse of the world through the eyes of someone in love, enraged by war, and filled with questions about choices, religion, and life.

On the first track, "Mt. Washington", two lovers decide to take leave of their self-imposed prison cells and in spite of the terror they feel by releasing themselves into the world, they wonder at the beauty of their life together forgetting about "the mortgage and the end of time", they "blend together like bleeding lips and trust that death will be our dying wish".

The heartbreakingly sentimental lyrics of "50 Year Love Affair" take the listener on a poetic journey of two life-long lovers; while "Big Love Lullaby" sweetly describes the all-consuming feelings a parent has for her child whose world keeps getting bigger with each passing day.

Understanding the dangers of religion and questioning the Christian doctrine espoused throughout childhood by a family of preachers leads to an attempt to reconcile God with reality on "Oh My God I Miss You". Emily sings angelically, "What do you do when you've whittled him down, to nothing but a stone in the barren ground?" "to nothing but a memory from your hometown? I go wild, with possibility; I go wild, with my fragility."

The creation of "Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks" signals an arrival for Emily. She confidently expresses herself and exposes her talents in ways that would not have been possible had she chosen to stay in New York.

With this record, Emily makes the most of her strengths as an impassioned songwriter and radiant singer. Her production is warm, rich and textured while still allowing for the loveliness of space in each song. The record is a cohesive collection of dreamscapes seeped in metaphor and savagely beautiful anti-war songs.

The final track, "Dr. Hubris and His Vile of Turpentine" inspired by the reclusive Thomas Pynchon, is a self-reflective, banjo laden dithyramb on which Emily confides, "You had it all along; someday you still don't know you've got it". Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks proves that Emily Wells has had it all along.

Read what the critics are saying about Emily!
"Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks" has some of the best, most well written music and gorgeous female vocals ever." - Reviewer Magazine

"Multi-instrumentalist Emily Wells says she's 'most influenced by the songs and voices of Nina Simone and Bob Dylan.' You can hear it in Emily's music. She's a singer-songwriter with unconventional and often chilling vocals." - NPR

"Emily Wells has a quavering, angelic voice that has a little aura of strangeness. On 'Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks,' she uses that voice to great effect as her band helps her create shuffling, creaking portraits of idiosyncratic characters. Have a listen." -iTunes

"The album's instrumental complexity sets it apart from more traditional folk... her vocals are playful, fluctuating between fragile and precious, mischievous and seductive... Wells' 'Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks' overflows with creativity and expressiveness, serving as the perfect reminder to never lose your creative control." - Performer Magazine

"Like a mix of Nina Simone and Bjork, Wells bled emotion with every word ." -Live show review in Performer Magazine

"Wells' resolutely indie music should appeal to fans of freak-folk and poetic lyrics that wind outside usual verse-chorus-bridge constructs amidst quirky arrangements of keyboards, xylophone, guitar and violin. Warbling over solo piano, Wells flirts with preciousness on the Joanna Newsom-esque "Supermarket," but the unvarnished vulnerability of "My Tin Car" is genuinely affecting, as is "View From a Blind Eye". - Pasadena Weekly

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