Miss Emily

The Medicine

Gypsy Soul

Canadian powerhouse blues and soul singer, multiple Maple Blues Award winner Miss Emily (a.k.a Emily Fennell), returns with her most fully realized album to date. The Medicine is a unifying, at times sing-along with several anthemic soul tunes and strains of Americana. Recorded in Nashville, fellow Canadian Colin Linden, who has produced the likes of Keb’ Mo’, The Band, T-Bone Burnett, and many others, is at the helm. In the studio are such familiar names as Ann and Regina McCrary, Kevin McKendree, JIm Hoke, and Bryan Owings. Linden plays guitar on all nine tracks. The album comes twenty years after Miss Emily made her first record. She wrote or co-wrote eight of the nine, some recent and others that are two decades old.

Although Miss Emily began writing the album during a dark period in her life, the overriding takeaway is hope. She says, “Ultimately, we are one big community of vulnerable, loving, suffering, and surviving human beings”. Her songs touch on every word in that sentence. In the driving opener “My Freedom,” she reflects on a troubled, reckless past but emphasizes a positive demeanor, realizing she is in control of her destiny. “Stand Together, Band Together” is the sing-along anthem centered on community and unity, as the McCrarys sing behind her with a call-and-response gospel feel. The ‘suffering’ combined with empathy is the subject of the title track, a searing account of addiction and loss (“You took the medicine ‘til the medicine took you.”)

Her wall-shaking vocal pipes are on display in the soul ballad, “Maybe,” co-written with her longtime writing partner, Rob Baker of the Canadian band The Tragically Hip. This one hits on the ‘loving’ and ‘surviving’ in her quote, finding the strength to make a fragile relationship endure. She’s past the point of ‘maybe’ with her partner. She reaches even deeper into soul ballad mode on “You Make Believe,” calling out a duplicitous relationship, but ultimately giving the other some credit for his idealism. The pulsating “Running Again” speaks to ‘surviving’ as the McCrarys return to accent the choruses. It features stinging guitar from Linden and that unmistakable keyboard sound of McKendree on both piano and organ.

‘Surviving’ and ‘vulnerable’ converge in her heartfelt message in “Solid Ground,” written for her young daughter during an especially stressful period in Fennell’s life. She is quoted in Blues Matters magazine: “We were very poor; I had no financial support and no close family nearby. There was so much I couldn’t give her, but I knew I had all the love in the world for her, and somehow, I’d find a way to make her feel secure. This song is that promise to her.”

The only non-original is the gut-wrenching tale of “Smith’s Bay Drowning,” written by S. Pasternak with a poem by Miss Shannon.This one hits hard on the ‘suffering’ in her quote, as a mother of six children was left with only one surviving child. Here, we have reached the album’s lowest depth, only to be redeemed by the celebratory, moving closer “Remember This Song,” again with the McCrarys. Ultimately, as she so succinctly pointed out, we love, suffer, and ultimately survive. The album was apparently written during a difficult time for Fennel, who displays unshakable courage, opting to take the higher ground in the compelling, deeply emotive, and memorable The Medicine.

• Jim Hynes

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