Aaron Embry is a name I keep hearing but also an act I keep missing… he just opened at the Hollywood Bowl for Mumford and Sons this weekend, which isn’t small business! But I saw him before, as he has been playing piano for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros for three years, and if you go back further in time, I saw him play with Elliott Smith in 2002. It was in the middle of a show and Elliott called him for some help on a song as he knew Embry was in the room. And Embry has a lot of people on his resume beside Smith, he has for example worked with Daniel Lanois, Willie Nelson, Scott Weiland, Emmylou Harris…
He just released his own work a few months ago, a solo album entitled ‘Tiny Prayers’ that he wrote while being on tour with Edward Sharpe, and recorded at his home in California. NPR is currently featuring two tracks of the album, ‘Raven's Song’ and ‘Good-Red-Road Men’, two intimate songs with two different styles, as the first one is a country ballad with haunting Neil Young-esque harmonica and nasal fragile vocals, and the second one is even more melancholic with piano notes cascading almost as if it were a classical Debussy-esque eerie composition.
On the same NPR website, you can also download for free the bright ballad ‘Moon of the Daylit Sky’ with heartfelt harmonies reminiscent of Emmylou Harris’ style, and below you can check out the video of another piano song, ‘No Go’, where jazzy arrangements and rustic harmonica brilliantly mix in a catchy and sad melody.
Embry may be making music very distant from the exuberance of his last band, but in this electronica era his music sounds humble and genuine, with no superfluous arrangements, just as cozy as a warm wood cabin during a cold fall evening,