ALBUM REVIEW
The Resurrection Game
Emma Swift
STANDOUT NEW ALBUM
9
By David Rea
1st September, 2025
Release date: 12th September, 2025
Label: Tiny Ghost Records
OUR WORLD IS so machine-tooled for speed, you sometimes wonder what it will take to slow it down. For Nashville-based singer-songwriter Emma Swift, it was a seven-week nervous breakdown, which saw her sectioned in her native Australia. ‘My world got very dark,’ she said of her mental collapse. ‘I… emerged too delicate to function for almost a year [and now] I’m a much more reflective, slow and gentle person than I used to be.’
The origin story for Swift’s stunning new full-length album, The Resurrection Game, her first of all original material, found musical form over the following three years. If you go in for psychogeography then at least some of the album’s spaciousness comes from where it was eventually recorded, Chale Abbey Studios, situated on the southern edge of the Isle of Wight. There is something of the uncluttered horizons of that locale here, giving room for Swift's voice — a thing of rare, frictionless beauty — to float and circle on the songs’ emotional thermals.
The larghissimo pulse of opener, ‘Nothing and Forever’, sounds like someone coming to, searching for meaning amongst a handful of words: ‘Somewhere between, nothing and forever / The sun and the sea, nothing and forever’. On the title track, ‘The Resurrection Game’, the healing begins, as Swift reflects on her weeklong stay at the Hoffman Institute, where she began to unpick the knot of behaviours she had unconsciously learnt in childhood.
The album’s large bruised skies allow us to luxuriate in the musicianship and production on display. Swift took some of Nashville's finest to the Isle of Wight with her, including bassist Eli Beaird (Willie Nelson, James Bay), drummer Dom Billet (Yola, Phosphorescent) and producer Jordan Lehning (Kacey Musgraves, Rodney Crowell), who put together the string arrangements. These coax new strains of emotion from the beautifully understated vocal melodies, transforming the album into the aural equivalent of an IMAX movie.
“The grand musical design is the perfect home for the album’s big themes. As Swift pieces herself back together, she reflects on everything from mortality to the struggle for human connection. The lyrics have been lovingly crafted to reach precise poetic form, yet they still somehow sound spontaneous and effortless.”
More lavish passages swell up and fall away like sudden surges of emotion. Juan Solorzano’s sour guitar lines and crackling chords and Spencer Cullum’s pedal steel guitar counterpoint and compliment Lehning’s orchestration. On ‘Going Where the Lonely Go’, Lehning paints dark sonic caverns for Swift’s lonesome voice to wander through.
The grand musical design is the perfect home for the album’s big themes. As Swift pieces herself back together, she reflects on everything from mortality to the struggle for human connection. The lyrics have been lovingly crafted to reach precise poetic form, yet they still somehow sound spontaneous and effortless. Ghosts, skeletons and bones abound, and lines like ‘your kiss tastes like the abyss’ are dropped into the soundscape with deft and heartbreaking timing.
This is the kind of album which, after a casual listen, is consigned to late night or Sunday morning listening, as if music was some kind of vibe generator. It is the sort of album recommended to steer and comfort someone through periods of struggle. The record certainly works at those times (the album’s first single, ‘No Happy Endings’, shattered this reviewer into tiny pieces), but there is so much more here. It is slow, immersive and painful, yes, but what comes through on repeated spins is beguiling emotional complexity. The abstract themes are grounded in candid and witty storytelling, vulnerability presented with humour. The opening lines of ‘Catholic Girls Are Easy’ are typical,
If I show you my truth, then will you show me yours In the back of a van, with my head against the door
Slowing down can feel uncomfortable, even frustrating, especially when the world has programmed us for speed. But this album lures you into its unhurried world, revealing something new with each listen. You begin to discover the moments of sweetness, all of the sweeter because they are unexpected and hard won. Forget Sunday mornings and late nights. It is always the right time to visit the edge of the Isle of Wight, immerse yourself in those beautiful, wounded skies and play The Resurrection Game.
Tracklist
Nothing and Forever
The Resurrection Game
No Happy Endings
Going Where the Lonely Go
Beautiful Ruins
Catholic Girls Are Easy
Impossible Air
How to Be Small
For You and Oblivion
Signing Off with Love
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