The Guardian
April 25th 2008

The new folk scene in England is in pretty good shape, thanks to newcomers such as Jackie Oates, but it could be argued that the new Scottish scene is even healthier. Julie Fowlis and Eddi Reader have shown different ways in which traditional influences are being reworked north of the border, and now comes this impressively varied and thoughtful set from a young singer and songwriter from Dumfries.

Emily Smith plays piano and accordion, and her cool, confident, no-nonsense treatment of Robert Burns’ As I Was Wandering, or the rousing folk-rock treatment of May Colvin (a traditional song of lust, revenge and death), is matched against a series of her own gentle and reflective songs, which mostly stand up well against the older material. She is certainly ambitious. Old Mortality is an intriguingly sturdy story of a Dumfries stonemason who spent his life maintaining the graves of those who opposed the changes that King Charles I made to the Church of Scotland, while Winter Song is a modern Scottish answer to Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes? Smith deserves to become yet another new folk celebrity.
RD