Emmy The Great, Rough Trade East, London

In the familiar setting of Brick Lane’s Rough Trade East, a surprisingly large audience of French school children (oh la la!), older folk, and everyone in between, gather around the stage waiting for Emmy.

Performing with a basic set-up of simply her guitar and bandmate Euan (of Young Husband) on electric, they open the set with a calm and slightly underwhelming ‘Dinosaur Sex’. The amusingly titled track is simple and nice but unfortunately not much more. Emmy thanks the diverse audience for coming along, and quite rightly points out that “obviously social networking works!”

Next up is golden oldie ‘We Almost Had A Baby’– a great track from her first EP that’s simultaneously light-hearted and serious which gets a couple of audience members singing along. Tonight’s version features additional vocals from Euan, which works really well.

The already well-received ‘Iris’ follows this. ‘Iris’ is pretty and boasts lovely lyrics and well placed tinkley bits (technical term) from Euan that flit wonderfully above Emmy’s delicate voice and carry the song along nicely. The pretty ‘Cassandra’ tells of the singer’s favourite “Troy story” before ‘Creation’ gives us a clearly meaningful narrative that’s a lot darker and more intimate than any of her previous work.

‘Exit Night’ is great - faster paced like her older work yet retaining the complexities of her newer, featuring varying speeds and pitches in a beautiful little adventure of a track. The lyrics are poetic and melancholy, adding depth to an already brilliant track. The duo then hit us with ‘First Love’ and ‘24’, the latter requested by the audience, both taken from the first EP. Both are all kinds of fantastic, featuring nice, subtle harmonies from Euan.

Emmy chats to the audience casually throughout the set, dropping amusing comments now and then and smoothly styling out a forgotten lyric. ‘Paper Forests’ features the magical reverby backing that floats below a significant amount of their recently released album, Virtue. This wonderful track again secures our faith in said new album.

Miss Emma-Lee Moss can do no wrong in our eyes. She’s sweet, lovely, instantly likable and her honesty shines through in both her lyrics and her performances. Emmy The Great has had our hearts since her debut ‘First Love’ and will have them until her last.