Emmy The Great, Aberdeen Moshulu

’s long-awaited debut album, ‘First Love’, was released just one week before this gig took place. However, there is a general feeling throughout the crowd that the people who are there to see Emmy are dedicated fans. This is her first visit to headline a show in Aberdeen, and it is one that the folk singer and her band’s small fanbase here in the highlands had been waiting quite a while for.

But before Emmy takes to the stage, her long-time friends double up as support acts. Firstly, Younghusband takes to the stage infront of an annoyingly sparse crowd. While not a single person decides to inhabit the vast expanse of the dancefloor, the band copes with this hostility well enough, and plays a fairly enjoyable set. While it’s doubtful that anyone leaves the venue as their biggest fan, they do well to please a tricky crowd. Main support Exlovers don’t do as well unfortunately, and seem disappointed with the still rather quiet crowd when they come on stage. They looked awkward, slightly annoyed and let down by the reaction they get. However, their music is hardly the kind to inspire a massive reaction, and is very middle of the road for it’s genre.

Finally though, it is time for the young focus of the evening and her band to take to the stage. The crowd seems to suddenly increase quite a bit, and the dancefloor is now thankfully quite thriving. Opening with a triple bill of singles ‘Easter Parade’, ‘We Almost Had A Baby’ and ‘Gabriel’ is a stroke of genius, and kick-starts the performance fantastically. This also helps to attract the attention of the crowd, and results in a relatively silent audience (with the exception of some banter about playing Guitar Hero on Valentine’s day and the odd shout-out, recieved warmly by the band).

Demo songs and rarities, thankfully, are present in abundance. ‘Canopies and Grapes’, ‘Short Country Song’ and the fantastic ‘Lost In Austin’ are included in the set to keep the old fans happy, but the set obviously mainly focuses on songs from her debut album. The show ends rather abruptly however, with album low-point ‘War’ being played, then suddenly the band wander off in a massive anti-climax. Thankfully though, Emmy takes to the stage shortly after for a brief, unplanned encore. Firstly she plays a beautiful solo version of her best song, ‘The Hypnotists Son’, and then the band join her onstage for a couple of songs to end the show properly.

The setlist (which changes from night to night) makes this performance. It features some great performances of songs from ‘First Love’, but is sprinkled with old classics played beautifully. Obviously it does include some bad tracks (‘Dylan’, ‘War’ and ‘Museum Island’, to be exact.) but the good far outweighs the bad, and the audience leaves the venue with smiles on their faces.