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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Emma Falk Dennis and the grand stained glass bloodletting of "Stay"

 

"Never getting undressed / Allowed for quickness / Without notice / Resigned to fleeing under night / Hellos were always warmer than goodbyes..."


The grand stained glass bloodletting of "Stay", by Los Angeles (by way of Derbyshire, England) singer-songwriter / musician Emma Falk Dennis, feels like an introduction to a filmic story with actors going through their paces and Dennis as the narrator, something between an abstract indie film and performance art or maybe a medium yet not invented. This classic nature with blends of austere art rock and indie folk, even post punk, chamber pop or a piano bar at some mysterious stop in the middle of nowhere has Dennis transporting you before you realize it. The sort of 60's / 70's / 80's art rock shapes, the psychedelic sweep, that at times suggests an amalgam of ELO and The Beatles, is part of the hypnosis but a lot of this emotional transformations (and transportations) have all to do about Dennis's vocal countenance. Highly engaging it is part comely gypsy, part sagely bewitcher, part attraction you have known your whole life but not really known.

The style here has to do with a kind of free spiritedness and bawdy spirit, poetic licence and incense, new age, Eastern meditations and elixirs unknown to the naive among us. Possibly folkster and hippie as one and psychic connections (attitudinally / spiritually) might be the sinew of Portishead's "Numb" or PJ Harvey's "Shame" or Kate Bush's "Moments of Pleasure", if that makes any sense at all. Not sure if I does really but then I am riffing it.

"Stay" is from Emma Falk Dennis's debut album "The Dust Up of the Century", produced by David J (Bauhaus/ Love and Rockets), out now.

LINER NOTES (bracketed):

[Emma Falk Dennis is a writer and a singer from Los Angeles, California by way of Derbyshire, England. She’s fronted bands including London’s The Black Site, and has contributed words and performance to films.]

LYRICS

Never getting undressed
Allowed for quickness
Without notice
Resigned to fleeing under night
Hellos were always warmer than goodbyes

In you I assumed more of the same
Conditioned to the one night game
But I still couldn’t keep myself away
Some secret part of me wanted so to stay

I had developed methods for
Leaving feeling at his front door
Convinced of necessity, I’m sure
By each mirage that came before

In you I assumed it’d be the same
Some re-warmed sin for half a day
I was used to being thrown away
I couldn’t fathom
Someone using their tongue
To say

Stay, why don’t you stay
Stay, why don’t you stay
A strange concept not yet grasped by us, stay
A long since dark light flickers in you and I, stay

Your touch your taste the dazzle in your eye
Hinted something different had arrived
But how to tell the soul so used to digging holes
She’s worth a million shoveled mountainsides

In you I assumed more of the same
Some re-warmed sin for half a day
I was used to being thrown away
I couldn’t fathom
Someone using there tongue
To

Stay, why don’t you stay
Stay, why don’t you stay

Some strange concept not yet grasped by us, stay
A long since dark light flickers in you and I, stay
Untold wealth vitality and health ours to claim
I’m not sure I could want anything more but to

-Robb Donker Curtius








THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM 


https://open.spotify.com/artist/3hvbvdoTVxtD6MkcSRXC53

https://www.instagram.com/emma.falk.dennis/


Emma Falk Dennis is a writer and a singer from Los Angeles, California by way of Derbyshire, England. She’s fronted bands including London’s The Black Site, and has contributed words and performance to films.


Emma Falk Dennis, singer songwriter, musician, artist, formerly from London's The Black Site, folk, art rock , indie rock, post punk, abstract pop, Los Angeles based, "Stay", debut album "The Dust Up of the Century",


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