Following the release of her 2011 album, Virtue, Emma-Lee Moss set on a vagabond voyage toggling between touring and personal travel from her home of London to Salt Lake City, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, before finally landing at her new home base in New York. Out of that course came the four tracks that comprise S, where Moss distances herself from the motif of heartbreak, a subject that anchored so much of her previous work, and instead reflects more on the existential changes around her.
Miles away from the acoustic "anti-folk" origins of her first album, 2009’s First Love, but a conceivable progression from Virtue, S is a study in patterns and effects. "Swimming Pool" rings in with eddies of shuddering guitar reverb that guide the slow, cognitive track through observations on the perceived perfection of someone else’s unreality ("The sunshine, your tan lines, your good times and your blue swimming pool"). It's is an exemplar of how Moss’ new experimentations can yield ideal results—tranquil and ruminative, yet also able to take a compelling turn with metronomic beats and baritone backing vocals by Wild Beasts' Tom Fleming. But after such as intensely evocative intro, the ensuing three tracks fail to leave nearly as much of an impression.
The anxiety-ridden "Social Halo" uses the same repetitive patterns as "Swimming Pool", but here they lack momentum, only kicking over some chimes and roughing up some guitars in its four-minute run. This all comes across as feasibly deliberate—Moss literally sings "the opposite of volcano" throughout the song—but still stale nevertheless. Closer "Somerset (I Can’t Get Over)" is the closest we get to a glimpse at the pre-nomadic Moss with her bookishness wit taking center stage as she pleas for an ex to "please don’t get over me" between listing famous authors. It’s devoid of the symbolism that became distracting on Virtue, leaving the EP on a nakedly saccharine note.
Moss’ electric inclinations lay out a promising foundation for a full-length album which is said to follow this EP and, as ever, her narratives do hit some philosophical nails on the head, especially when it comes to the hot topic of digital anxiety. She has indeed stepped outside with S, but perhaps not far out enough; as it stands, Moss’ journey isn’t done just yet, but the final stretches of her expedition are in sight.
