"Quietly transfixing" violinist, singer, producer and composer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, deft approach to live sampling, and "dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs" (New York Times) that blend "traditionalism with electronic ambiance" (NPR).
Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells announces an extensive North America tour for Spring 2022 today along with the release of her third single "Love Saves The Day", off her forthcoming LP 'Regards to the End' (out 2/25/22). Wells will be hitting cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Denver and more. See full dates below.
On her new album, 'Regards to the End', Wells explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Emily Wells on "Love Saves The Day":"
""Love Saves the Day" is kind of a dance song, kind of an anthem, but at its heart it's knotted like a Zeppelin bend to the story of David Buckel. In some ways, this song set a model for the rest of the album and the ways in which songs can move through the stories of other people as a means to finding our own. David Buckel was an environmentalist, a lawyer who fought on behalf of trans rights and marriage equality; he was a dad and husband. He died by suicide in protest of environmental injustice in 2018. I was beset with grief upon his death, not because I knew him personally or because I have any claim to his life or story, but rather through a quiet empathy that is, simply, human. The painting by Michael Stamm, which serves as the single cover, I believe might be born from a similar place. It's titled April 14, 2018 (RIP David Buckel). I am so grateful to Michael for lending us this tremoring image full of love and grief."
More info on 'Regards to the End':
"I'm just a fire," Emily Wells sings on her album Regards to the End, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. "Burn everything in sight." And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on Regards to the End from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments, and wind instruments. The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. The vocals and winds, a strong presence on the album, foreground breath. Life - unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief - swells inside of every note. Drums tie us to the pulse of our heartbeats, rooting and grounding us.
The body is a cardinal, here, running through the ten-song album like a red thread. The body is an animal, a number, a puppet. The body wishes it were dancing. The body is tethered and doesn't know if it wants to be. Where would it run if it weren't? Wells's poetic lyrics never say it explicitly, but a body is not an easy thing to inhabit in a time of viral pandemics, changing climates, and a host of other humanitarian and planetary disasters. "Some kind of violence you feel in the body, my body, my body," Wells cantillates in "Blood Brother". "Do it in remembrance of me," she adds, bringing an intimate valence to a biblical sentiment. It's worth remembering that the millennia-old practice of taking Communion - symbolically consuming the body and blood of Christ to commemorate his death - is fundamentally an act of embodied empathy that acknowledges earthly suffering; taking place in the dark of our innermost chambers, the experience of such radical proximity may be visceral, even erotic.
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Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells announces an extensive North America tour for Spring 2022 today along with the release of her third single "Love Saves The Day", off her forthcoming LP 'Regards to the End' (out 2/25/22). Wells will be hitting cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Denver and more. See full dates below.
On her new album, 'Regards to the End', Wells explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Emily Wells on "Love Saves The Day":"
""Love Saves the Day" is kind of a dance song, kind of an anthem, but at its heart it's knotted like a Zeppelin bend to the story of David Buckel. In some ways, this song set a model for the rest of the album and the ways in which songs can move through the stories of other people as a means to finding our own. David Buckel was an environmentalist, a lawyer who fought on behalf of trans rights and marriage equality; he was a dad and husband. He died by suicide in protest of environmental injustice in 2018. I was beset with grief upon his death, not because I knew him personally or because I have any claim to his life or story, but rather through a quiet empathy that is, simply, human. The painting by Michael Stamm, which serves as the single cover, I believe might be born from a similar place. It's titled April 14, 2018 (RIP David Buckel). I am so grateful to Michael for lending us this tremoring image full of love and grief."
More info on 'Regards to the End':
"I'm just a fire," Emily Wells sings on her album Regards to the End, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. "Burn everything in sight." And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on Regards to the End from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments, and wind instruments. The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. The vocals and winds, a strong presence on the album, foreground breath. Life - unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief - swells inside of every note. Drums tie us to the pulse of our heartbeats, rooting and grounding us.
The body is a cardinal, here, running through the ten-song album like a red thread. The body is an animal, a number, a puppet. The body wishes it were dancing. The body is tethered and doesn't know if it wants to be. Where would it run if it weren't? Wells's poetic lyrics never say it explicitly, but a body is not an easy thing to inhabit in a time of viral pandemics, changing climates, and a host of other humanitarian and planetary disasters. "Some kind of violence you feel in the body, my body, my body," Wells cantillates in "Blood Brother". "Do it in remembrance of me," she adds, bringing an intimate valence to a biblical sentiment. It's worth remembering that the millennia-old practice of taking Communion - symbolically consuming the body and blood of Christ to commemorate his death - is fundamentally an act of embodied empathy that acknowledges earthly suffering; taking place in the dark of our innermost chambers, the experience of such radical proximity may be visceral, even erotic.
"Quietly transfixing" violinist, singer, producer and composer Emily Wells is known for her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation, deft approach to live sampling, and "dramatic, meticulous and gothic songs" (New York Times) that blend "traditionalism with electronic ambiance" (NPR).
Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells announces an extensive North America tour for Spring 2022 today along with the release of her third single "Love Saves The Day", off her forthcoming LP 'Regards to the End' (out 2/25/22). Wells will be hitting cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Denver and more. See full dates below.
On her new album, 'Regards to the End', Wells explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Emily Wells on "Love Saves The Day":"
""Love Saves the Day" is kind of a dance song, kind of an anthem, but at its heart it's knotted like a Zeppelin bend to the story of David Buckel. In some ways, this song set a model for the rest of the album and the ways in which songs can move through the stories of other people as a means to finding our own. David Buckel was an environmentalist, a lawyer who fought on behalf of trans rights and marriage equality; he was a dad and husband. He died by suicide in protest of environmental injustice in 2018. I was beset with grief upon his death, not because I knew him personally or because I have any claim to his life or story, but rather through a quiet empathy that is, simply, human. The painting by Michael Stamm, which serves as the single cover, I believe might be born from a similar place. It's titled April 14, 2018 (RIP David Buckel). I am so grateful to Michael for lending us this tremoring image full of love and grief."
More info on 'Regards to the End':
"I'm just a fire," Emily Wells sings on her album Regards to the End, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. "Burn everything in sight." And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on Regards to the End from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments, and wind instruments. The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. The vocals and winds, a strong presence on the album, foreground breath. Life - unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief - swells inside of every note. Drums tie us to the pulse of our heartbeats, rooting and grounding us.
The body is a cardinal, here, running through the ten-song album like a red thread. The body is an animal, a number, a puppet. The body wishes it were dancing. The body is tethered and doesn't know if it wants to be. Where would it run if it weren't? Wells's poetic lyrics never say it explicitly, but a body is not an easy thing to inhabit in a time of viral pandemics, changing climates, and a host of other humanitarian and planetary disasters. "Some kind of violence you feel in the body, my body, my body," Wells cantillates in "Blood Brother". "Do it in remembrance of me," she adds, bringing an intimate valence to a biblical sentiment. It's worth remembering that the millennia-old practice of taking Communion - symbolically consuming the body and blood of Christ to commemorate his death - is fundamentally an act of embodied empathy that acknowledges earthly suffering; taking place in the dark of our innermost chambers, the experience of such radical proximity may be visceral, even erotic.
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Composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells announces an extensive North America tour for Spring 2022 today along with the release of her third single "Love Saves The Day", off her forthcoming LP 'Regards to the End' (out 2/25/22). Wells will be hitting cities: Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, Denver and more. See full dates below.
On her new album, 'Regards to the End', Wells explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Emily Wells on "Love Saves The Day":"
""Love Saves the Day" is kind of a dance song, kind of an anthem, but at its heart it's knotted like a Zeppelin bend to the story of David Buckel. In some ways, this song set a model for the rest of the album and the ways in which songs can move through the stories of other people as a means to finding our own. David Buckel was an environmentalist, a lawyer who fought on behalf of trans rights and marriage equality; he was a dad and husband. He died by suicide in protest of environmental injustice in 2018. I was beset with grief upon his death, not because I knew him personally or because I have any claim to his life or story, but rather through a quiet empathy that is, simply, human. The painting by Michael Stamm, which serves as the single cover, I believe might be born from a similar place. It's titled April 14, 2018 (RIP David Buckel). I am so grateful to Michael for lending us this tremoring image full of love and grief."
More info on 'Regards to the End':
"I'm just a fire," Emily Wells sings on her album Regards to the End, her ethereal warble floating over a backbeat of drums. "Burn everything in sight." And so she does, in a new body of work that smolders and scorches, wounding and illuminating in equal turn. The polymathic composer, producer, and video artist explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience - as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn - in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention.
Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, often thinks in terms of an ensemble while composing. Along with a roster of contributors including her father, a French horn player and former music minister, she builds the songs on Regards to the End from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments, and wind instruments. The music is numinous in part because the listening experience is a resoundingly bodied one. The vocals and winds, a strong presence on the album, foreground breath. Life - unsanitary, beautiful, persistent, brief - swells inside of every note. Drums tie us to the pulse of our heartbeats, rooting and grounding us.
The body is a cardinal, here, running through the ten-song album like a red thread. The body is an animal, a number, a puppet. The body wishes it were dancing. The body is tethered and doesn't know if it wants to be. Where would it run if it weren't? Wells's poetic lyrics never say it explicitly, but a body is not an easy thing to inhabit in a time of viral pandemics, changing climates, and a host of other humanitarian and planetary disasters. "Some kind of violence you feel in the body, my body, my body," Wells cantillates in "Blood Brother". "Do it in remembrance of me," she adds, bringing an intimate valence to a biblical sentiment. It's worth remembering that the millennia-old practice of taking Communion - symbolically consuming the body and blood of Christ to commemorate his death - is fundamentally an act of embodied empathy that acknowledges earthly suffering; taking place in the dark of our innermost chambers, the experience of such radical proximity may be visceral, even erotic.
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2236 Martin Luther King, Oakland, CA 94612
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