Ember Schrag The Sewing Room
Edible Onion is very pleased to bring you Ember Schrag's new album, The Sewing Room: a collection of sad, delicate folk songs straight from the deep and desolate midwest. The Sewing Room is the follow up to her 2010 EP, Jephthah's Daughter. Recorded with just a guitar and her voice, the ep showed Ember exploring a more subtle and intimate approach to recording and songwriting than what appeared on her 2009 debut full-length. The Sewing Room expands upon the themes and minimal arrangements explored on Jephthah's Daughter, but adds a small, eclectic ensemble of musicians that offer up restrained yet emotionally resonant performances that give the recordings a lush and dreamy presence.
The sparse arrangements are a backdrop for Ember's heartbreaking voice and lyrics, revealing a simultaneously empowered and vulnerable musician and songwriter. Here, her songs are rooted in past nightmares, heartaches and old memories, but are examined through the lens of hindsight that reveals a sense of uncanny peace permeating and ringing throughout them. It's like the uneasy feeling of standing alone in an enormous field at night but also the silent reflection that comes after a sustained emotional conflict. These are twelve achingly beautiful songs that swell and fade like breaths unassumingly sighing.
Ember is backed by a roster of amazing guest musicians including P.G. Six, Jonah Sirota (The Chiara Quartet), Amy Denio and Alex McManus (The Bruces, Vic Chestnutt, Lampchop) along with guitar improviser Phillip Gayle, instrument builder Jay Kreimer, bassist Max Johnson, and Schrag's longtime collaborator, jazz drummer Gary Foster. Recorded in Omaha and Brooklyn by A.J. Mogis and Mitch Rackin, the album was lovingly mixed to tape by Greg Talenfeld in Nyack, NY, and mastered by Carl Rowatti.
The Sewing Room is being co-released by our friends, Single Girl Married Girl Records. Two versions of the album will be available. The first one-hundred will be handmade books designed and assembled by Edible Onion. The page layout for the books was done by Bryan Day of Public Eyesore Records. Illustrations were provided by UK artist, Ian Pyper.
The books have been sold out, but you can get a digipak version of the album from Single Girl Married Girl.
