http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16873&letmein=1/

http://www.myitthings.com/emjay/Post/entertainment/It_Music/Emily_Easterly__on_the_record/704162008001221634.htm/

http://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=5297

http://thetubmagazine.com/artistlaunchmag/2008/01/

http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16265

Sultry auburn-haired guitar-and-piano-playing singer-songwriter from Virginia who recorded in Miami, dark indie folk fading fast through gritted teeth, with words about cobblestones, old wooden houses, and cartwheels. Fortunately not introverted enough to deserve the Cat Power comparisons. Seasons Never Change, her album title claims, which isn't really true but sort of is.

A fragile-sounding voice doesn't always suggest mere fragility; take Aimee Mann, for instance, whose resonant odes to human frailty are conveyed in haunted and muted tones, or Chrissie Hynde, a master of soulful understatement. Both artists refrain from the vocal histrionics that are common in popular music and their songs are stronger for it.

Emily Easterly is another singer with similar good taste and restraint. Her second disc, Cole, follows the previous year's debut, Assembling Emily. Ostensibly, this is folk based music, with a solid acoustic guitar construct on which Emily lays her bare-boned lyrics. But thanks to creative input from recording pros who have worked with other Richmond, Virginia-area peers like Sparklehorse and Cracker, Easterly's songs are fleshed out with gorgeous pedal steel licks (the sublime "Bad Luck"), anachronistic analog synth sounds and plenty of ballsy rhythm electric guitar. Her words are refreshingly na

Middle names don't usually serve much purpose, and are just embarrassing details on driver's licenses. But it's their "buried away" nature that prompted singer / songwriter Emily Easterly to name her new eight-song CD after her middle name, Cole. "Middle names are very much a part of a person, but not in the forefront," she says. "Which is the way I feel about these songs." Co-produced by Easterly and Miguel Urbiztondo (drummer for Tweaker and Koester) and engineered by Alan Weatherhead (who's played with Cracker, Tim Buckley and Sparklehorse), Cole is a promising mixture of Fiona Apple (without the anger) and Mazzy Star's quiet seductiveness. The songs are not dark, but evoke daily things that barely register: the simple sensuality of an unmade bed, shafts of light in a shuttered room, the quiet spaces in conversation. Revolving around the themes of desire and frustration, Easterly sings as if, to get to her destination, she needs to circumvent uncooperative walls and flesh, as in the lead track ''Concrete Floor'' (sample line: "Wishing here on a concrete floor, hoping you could make it through a cement door").

Easterly is at her best on the mildly desperate "Tuesday" ("But it wouldn't be hard this Tuesday, to make enough room for you to stay"), and the soft brushes of "Bad Luck" ("You and me, just driving away, from a bad, bad day"), are as soothing as fingers running through your hair.

Cole is a good album, and a promising harbinger of things to come from Easterly, a relative newcomer to the scene.

Emily Easterly, who hails from the Southside of Richmond, is on a mission. Her mission is to become a famous singer-songwriter while still going to school full-time in Florida. And if "Assembling Emily", the first EP from Ms. Easterly, is any indication, I think it will happen. "Assembling Emily" is 6 songs of gut wrenching emotion in the same vein as Fiona Apple or maybe Tori Amos with a bit of Sheryl Crow thrown in for good measure. All songs were written by Emily and she plays them with conviction. The combination of such talent makes for a delightful mix of drama and passion that could last for ages. Enlisting the help of Cracker guitarist, Johnny Hickman, and the percussion of Miguel Urbiztondo, who co-produced the cd with her, Emily will be a force to be reckoned with in a short time for a very long time.