Out Today: 'A Fish Of Earth' from Emily Brown

On the cover of Emily Brown's A Fish Of Earth an assortment of fruit lies scattered at the songwriter-poet's feet. A solitary grapefruit husk lies off to the side, a corner of the unhemmed scarlet drapery drags in the dirt, five candles stand crooked and unlit as the sun descends.

Like a painting from the Dutch Golden Age, the image juxtaposes still life and movement, as Brown sits patiently in the center, sporting a Mona-Lisa frown, unconcerned with the tangled array. Where her last album, 2018's Bee Eater, was a pristine arrangement of lyrical chamber pop and film-grain flourishes, A Fish Of Earth leaves the edges wild. An untamable bramble of orchestration and vivid lyricism, A Fish of Earth (out October 23 on Song Club Records) is a love letter to the romantic sublime, honoring all that is wild, unmolded, resisting outside influence.

Passionately evolving and unmitigated by perfectionist censor, the album swerves and leaps in a lyrical stream-of-consciousness, as Brown grapples with the disorienting and yet sublime realities of living in partnership.