Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The feeling of the fancy of the notions of spectral unseen beings are abound throughout the new album from Emily Portman, so much so that Coracle is more than a set of songs loosely tied together by packaging and a set of songs that glide across the listener’s attention; Coracle is arguably the philosophy of the spirit transformed and given life.

Philosophy is always subjective, like the thoughts of an English Literature student groping in mid air for the one true reason of why a poet’s work fits the ethos of existence and yet when the answer comes, it blinks wildly with the excited charms of a robin fending off a seagull from its nest.

The sense of the unearthly, of the magical and mystical run throughout each song that Ms. Portman has put together, the feeling that the perpetual foxtrot is there to be seen like footprints left tantalisingly in the hard driven snow or the trail left by the eager in search of a new idol, Coracle has that in abundance. It is this unearthly, of the supernatural that filters out the hysterics that such notions bring and is in the end laden with the personal and the beautiful individualistic.

With support in the venture from Lucy Farrell, Rachel Newton, Toby Kearney, M. G. Boulter, Sam Sweeney, Neil McSweeney and Will Schrimshaw, the tracks on the album don’t just blend together as if they have been placed side by side for effect, they have the resonance and attitude of having been woven naturally, darned together, and with love and in many ways resembles the works of Ovid as they deal with the idea of metamorphosis and change. Whether this change is through the power of anguish or through the delicate smile of rememberance is to be seen and decided upon.

Songs such as Nightjar, the excellence of the Brink of June, Seed Stitch, A Grief or the synchronisation of time and elegance in the album title track, all is revealed and all is crafted. Like a family blanket that gets added too year after yea, the colours and fabric of life are attained and preserved, in Ms. Portman’s latest venture, Coracle is a vision that one must admire fully from every angle.

Coracle is an absolute aural delight.  

Ian D. Hall