Emi Knight, the woman behind Strawberry Runners’ magical In The Garden, In The Night EP, has come along way since, as a seven-year-old in Indiana, she picked up the guitar and learnt to strum along to church hymns and Bob Dylan tunes. After a number of years drifting in and out of various musical projects, Emi seems to have stumbled upon something special in Strawberry Runners. Now based in Brooklyn, Emi formed Strawberry Runners back in 2013, and has been crafting the tracks that would go on to make this most magical of records ever since.
The resulting record is an exploration of adolescence, presented from the point of view of an older songwriter reflecting on the experiences that shaped her. Emi paints beautiful lyrical pictures, rich musical canvases where joy and sadness co-exist; entwining, shifting and growing together. Take the stunning Dog Days, a track that contrasts the sheer joy of slipping off your shoes and dipping them into a winding river, with the shocking death of a friend’s child, ultimately concluding, “search your whole life long, there ain’t nothing strong as a Kentucky woman”. It reads like a teenager’s diary entry, fluttering from the usual everyday self-doubt, to moments of beautiful tranquillity and devastating loss. The brilliant Brother is an apology and a promise to a sibling, “born five years after me”. It reflects on how Emi never picked up on his loneliness, She never realised how her teenage exploits and nights outs left him with nobody, and concludes with the most beautiful of sisterly sentiments, “when you’re a little older I’ll explain it all to you, why the good will never stay and all the dark and scary things will never go away but we’ll be bigger than them someday”.
Musically it is a record that drifts easily between styles, one second recalling the indie-pop of Allo Darlin’, the next drifting off into rich orchestral pop and then off to sweet honest alt-country that Lucinda Williams would be proud of. The record’s finest moment comes at it’s finale, Your Bed Was Tall is a tribute to Emi’s mother, who “stand’s tall in spite of the mighty tempest”. The tracks builds to a crescendo of entwined guitar lines and steady, booming drum beats, as Emi sings into the musical storm, “when the world ain’t crumbling, do you think we’ll stop fighting? When the world ain’t crumbling, will I let you in, will I let you in”. In a world where life can be a struggle, In The Garden, In The Night, was a reminder that we must always battle to shape the world we want to see, that compassion, effort and, yes, music, can help us all make a little more sense of it all.
Emi Night: vocals, guitars, mandolin, additional percussion
Baby Timm: trumpet, vocals, keyboards
Sam Kelley: guitars
Tyler Morse: bass, vocals
Max Barcelow: drums, vocals, additional percussion
Rich Goldberg: keyboards
The Fat Angel Sings 