Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

To lift any single from a truly mesmerising album can be seen on occasion as either an act of wallet piracy or an act of sabotage against the memory of what lingered through the mind when the listener first came across the piece of recording. At worst it can lead to the song being taken out of context, placing the music down as an afterthought desert but one filled with the remains of the starter and the main course.

Thankfully some songs stand out on their own two feet with sheer will and determination and for those that do the rewards are high and can lead to greater glory.

In Emily Portman’s excellent album Coracle, two of the most playful and intriguing songs have escaped the straight jacket and bounds of their place in the recording and insist that they be heard as separate entities, that their grandeur and message be heard not as part of a novel but as distinct poetry; it is a separation that works fully but only because Ms. Portman makes the listener believe in the end result.

In both the excellent Seed Stitch and Nightjar the music floats like a golden balloon caught on an updraft of air and yet with no sign of being pricked by insecurity or other means of damage that could be inflicted by the mass means of deliberate mischief.

Seed Stitch really captures the imagination of a single being taken from the loving arms of its parent album. The tale reminiscent of a story or cautionary warning out of Ovid’s The Metamorphosis, of the weaving of the gender and installing an idea of how boys and girls are not so different, it just is a matter of perspective.

The single release is not what it once was but every now and then something charming gets through and gives you the important urge to listen to the album in which it first nestled again, there is perhaps nothing more scared after all than hearing a song again, for the first time.

Ian D. Hall