Veilfall by Emily Yacina

For fans of The Last Dinner Party, Big Thief, trip hop, and that feeling in the back of your mind that everything you’re doing right now will come back to bite you, Veilfall by Emily Yacina tells the story of a romantic collapse with all the twee joy of classic indie folk. Earlier moments on the record pull much more exclusively from organic folk traditions, forming a mostly acoustic sound to support lyrics describing frustratingly halfway unrequited affection. As the album progresses, more regimented rhythmic forms reveal a deeper influence from electronica, eventually blossoming into moments much more steeped in hip hop than traditional folk as the lyrics turn towards heartbreak. Along with all of these other aesthetic and narrative shifts, word choice in the lyrics makes a break for the dark, the dire, and even the gruesome, portraying this loss as a genuine danger to the speaker’s health. As we trudge through the rubble with the speaker, we’re left to wonder how any of this could have been avoided, or if we were always meant to suffer here.