Emily Jane White's sixth album Immanent Fire recognizes our moment at the precipice of species annihilation, as she guides her listener through the feeling of life on a planet at the brink of destruction. White honors the sacred, the earthly, and all that is deemed feminine, even as these very elements are threatened with the violence of contemporary systems of power: patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism together conspire to ravage and to exploit natural world and its sacred beings, to subordinate women and other gendered people--the vanquishing of both the feminine and nature in and of itself. This is the dominant paradigm of modernity that feminist spiritual philosopher and witch Starhawk has named the war on immanence. Speaking directly from the fires incinerating California, White laments the destruction of the sacred feminine and the earth at once. White offers an exploration of the internal world. What is the feeling of life in the capitalocene ? A compassionate but also raw exposure of the anxiety, addiction and depression that have become normative. At the same time, she produces an alternative path: the revaluation of the feminine, the receptive, the vulnerable, the emotional. Ten songs present a deepening storm of melody that offers the hopeful ray of Emily's voice as the waves of rhythm crash and dance around her. Her voice is the listener's guide, a steady and reassuring presence as they march through eerie landscapes, caverns of reverb, church organs and synthetic arpeggios. The samples of birds, insects, and thunder mix with the blend of electronic and acoustic instruments, a subtle reminder of the necessary link between the fate of our ecology and the moral use of technology. White's new album juxtaposes a heavy melancholy with an intimate touching lightness through her singular alto voice backed by orchestral percussion, soaring strings, heavy guitars, a choir of voices, and an overall cinematic presentation of dynamic songwriting.
