When someone says they can’t make it past the first track of an album, that usually implies either a) an album that isn’t worth their time or b) their self-opinion of musical taste is such they can’t bring themselves to experience nice things. The latter are the kind of people who also shrug off a 40-year old’s release simply due to age. We don’t need those kinds of people and their negativity in our lives.  

When I say I couldn’t make it past the first track of Bristol-based noir-pop Emily Breeze’s Rapture it is because it is an opening track that hits so profoundly, perhaps I was “full of weapons-grade hope,” I couldn’t bring myself to move forward without listening to it over and over and over.

Seriously, I probably listened to it a dozen times before I even got to track two.

The ten-track release, out February 10th 2022 via Sugar Shack Records, is a “collection of coming-of (middle) age stories which celebrate flamboyant failure, excess and acceptance,” as put by Emily Breeze.

Running the risk of being top-heavy with the aforementioned opening brilliance of “Ordinary Life,” (which in and of itself feels like “Dance Hall Days” sifted through Eddie Izzard’s “A creeping Kid. For my film The Creeping Kid,” a life lived, career captured, and pains of reality) Rapture balances the record with finely tuned (instrumental and in life lesson) tracks that weave in and out of energy and reflection with purpose and poise. Whether popping with “Confessions Of An Ageing Party Girl” and closer “Hey Kidz” while carrying plenty wait, what did she just say? throughout (see: “Chelsea Satanist”), Rapture is a refreshing poetic prose soaring on just the right balance of pace. Finding a middle ground between brooding and elegance, the record is swirling in a conviction-driven prowess that lies somewhere in a Reed/Cave-ian view of reality which perpetuates an increasingly present questioning of one’s surroundings. I haven’t been this front-to-back mesmerized with the noir-pop/punk sound since the first run through Ezra Furman’s Day of The Dog.

The cool, honest aura surrounding the ten tracks of Rapture lends itself to an ever-serious tone of musicianship that blends and bends fluidly between the tongue-in-cheek and profoundly reflective lyrics. Crooning amongst the swagger of alt-rock/post-punk, Emily Breeze’s Rapture holds close to a punk presence and emits her own sense of being that is one part confidence and one part who gives a f**k.

That is to say, if you can get past the first track.