Emma Niblett, stage name ‘Scout’ is one of a kind. Residing in Portland by way of Nottingham, Scout likes to keep her live shows spicy by wearing wigs, reflective safety vests and at points using only her rudimentary drumming as instrumentation for her eccentric songs. She waves her freak flag high, but is thoughtful and endearing enough to keep it from feeling contrived.
This Fool Can Die Now oddly balances the tender and the terrifying. Opening with one of several duets with Will Oldham (often known as Bonnie Prince Billy) Scout’s voice sounds shockingly sweet as her and Oldham span the opening two tracks contemplating (gasp!) love. Their inimitable voices sound so disarming together on ballads like “The River of No Return” and “Kiss” one can almost suspend their disbelief and buy it. Niblett and Oldham are like a weirder Dylan and Baez wandering through cities dropping songs out of their pockets and making love in front of typewriters and ashtrays. The ever-presence of death is the only thematic bitterness in all of their odd, love-lorn crooning. But let’s face it, Oldham and Niblett are probably just singing and Scout still wants to rock.
“Let Thine Heart Be Warned” has all of the minimalistic power she discovered on Kidnapped By Neptune. Matching brittle rhythm guitar that would make Kurt Cobain proud with Steve Albini’s up front production, Scout really digs her nails in and climaxes in a mammoth heap of distortion and wailing. It’s all the more suprising after the album’s graceful opening.
This Fool Can Die Now has an unsettled kind of idiosyncrasy. Affecting strings on “Elizabeth (Black Hearted Queen)” and “River of No Return” are enough to make a fan out of your mom, but the drums and vocals only “Moon Lake” might weird her out. It’s hard to tell where she’s really going, but the results are always mesmerizing. “Dinosaur Egg” seems to sum it up the best “I’d much rather be a golden ball of light, but still have sex.” Maybe she can have it both ways; yearning meditations on love/mortality and kinetic explosions of monochromatic grunginess.
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