Looking through the liminality with Emily Rose Burnett On A Debut LP That's Sure To Turn Heads (And Plenty Of Hearts)

The NYC-Based Singer-Songwriter Has Cooked Up A Classic I Won't Be Taking Off Replay Anytime Soon

Have you ever noticed how movies and television often depict discovering love? Cameras zoom in on initial glances across a room, bright smiles gleam, hands accidentally bump into each other’s path, and looks are exchanged conveying far more than any word ever spoken could hope to describe. The lighting is perfect, and it seems as though a modern-day fairytale is playing out via each street corner, apartment, bar, or dry cleaning pickup in Everytown, USA. I’ve never actually seen any of these experiences in the real world, but I do know one thing that can potentially compare: music.

Music is a lightning rod of sense memory where a set of chords, vocals, and lyrics can make it seem like the whole world is on fire upside down. It even gives some people the psychophysiological response frisson, which manifests as chills or shivers upon hearing just the right melodic resonance. That tonal dopamine hit letting you know: this was a moment. Like great loves both real and dramatized, “those kinds of cars don’t pass you every day” (as an iconic musician once said). When you know something’s special, everything else in the moment is nothing more than simply static.

That’s how it felt to me when first hearing New York City-based singer-songwriter Emily Rose Burnett. I initially crossed orbits with the musician in March around the drop of her single “thank u” (later to be followed by April’s “couldn’t love you”). Her voice and melodic/lyrical approach immediately suggested something both significant, yet with greater still to come. Like a setup being built for a payoff not yet ready to land, but when it eventually would… you’d best prepare for that upside-down lightning rod being engulfed in flames.

And this is where we find ourselves today with the release of Burnett’s debut studio album, entitled liminality. Written, recorded, engineered, and produced by the artist herself, this LP is a tour de force from every creative perspective. What I once saw the first slivers of through “thank u” has become a full-throated shout on liminality, and it’s one of the best, most cohesive pieces of indie music from a true singer-songwriter that I’ve heard in a very long time. The raw, unvarnished, unflinching humanity within this record has a soul-stirring sense of statement the world of music so critically lacks.

Opening track “callin (intro)” is just that, a proclamation laying out the first steps of liminality. The record’s name is derived from a word referring to a state of transition, and this song begins the transformation’s search. Set amidst the gentle sound of nighttime crickets, Burnett’s aching croon is buoyed by plaintive piano, percussion fills, and strings that amplify a hymnal-hinted plea. Like looking for guidance from a greater power that doesn’t answer, or just someone you want to light up your phone who never does.

These pastoral beginnings quickly turn into the fuzzed-out guitar grooves of “blue jay,” which embraces a patchwork quilt of 60’s/70’s throwbacks to toss over the top of longing lingering beneath the surface. The songs from liminality were written over the course of Burnett’s twenties, and many moments like “callin” and “blue jay” reflect how that period of time is so commonly about trying to find your identity as a person.

This also applies to “house of glass,” which looks at the status quo of where Burnett is and decides this quicksand is no longer worth the price of the depths this pain has brought to her soul. Arranged like a Fiona Apple-style confessional, the track eventually explodes into a Beatles, White Album-esque guitar solo. As though what’s been brewing internally in her can’t be held back one more moment, and chaos will eventually bring from it catharsis.

Something more meditative seems to brew forth briefly in “erase me,” only to be washed away by the alt-rock-swept realization that this is a cage of a different category. Solitary stagnation isn’t freedom, either, if all it brings along is feeling like a castaway. Silent weight burdening within us can still bore just as deep a hole in our psyche, especially in a world of smartphones and the practice of “doomscrolling.”

The flick of a lighter and pull of a cigarette greet the returning outdoor vibes of “hindsight is 20/20,” in which the shape of the scope in front of Burnett has softened. She’s pulled back from the emotional edge of “erase me” to see with more clarity, though the pain still hits with a slam as sensory as the guitar lines growling along across the surface of the song. The artist isn’t just transitioning time in those liminal spaces; she’s also being held captive by the path of their sway. Frozen by where to turn to next.

There’s no greater example of this than “akrasia,” which is a Greek word essentially meaning to act against our own best interests due to “weakness of will.” Amidst a folk-rock pulse and tempo change that’s every bit a charming invite, we find Burnett questioning herself as her own worst enemy. Perhaps it isn’t chains holding her within this liminal space, but binds she could escape from anytime if she only had a stronger desire to leave this limbo behind.

This leads to the silky smooth, R&B-leaning self-reflection of “all that I need.” The musician’s introspection is captivating, not just from a musical standpoint but also from the identifiable nature of questioning: are the best versions of ourselves greatest when alone, all along? Do we sometimes look too much for others to be the center of our universe, when the truth is that we can hold up our own constellations just by loving ourselves?

Maybe that’s the final lesson to learn, but not without a few more missteps for the road. Take “a familiar hell,” for instance, which pulls from the Alanis Morissette playbook to lash out in frustration for not being able to stay away from self-destructive connections. Some dependencies (no matter how incompatible) can possess an unavoidable appeal, and Burnett demonstrates that “a familiar hell” still has a way of surpassing the pull of our better angels. Chaos can be a powerful drug to avoid, much less cut away for good.

But, in the end (and with the final album song “the liminal space”), we see Burnett turn the corner of the LP’s exit for the better: with grace. The path of liminality is far from lacking in tense complexity, hardships, wounds, regrets, anger, and pain. But that’s very emblematic of time spent living and learning what your twenties are all about as an age. Just because we stop being teenagers doesn’t mean self-identification automatically becomes set in stone. At 36, I’m still learning about me (and probably won’t ever stop).

While “the liminal space” doesn’t mean Burnett has found all the answers she’s been looking for tied neatly in a bow and resolved, it does end liminality feeling like a chapter closed. I think this is because the musician’s songwriting is so raw and bloodletting that you feel more and more connected to her odyssey as it progresses. I not only recognized myself in her in some moments, but could also easily empathize just through how much Burnett is so brutally, honestly, and unflinchingly real here.

It’s like watching a movie so well-written you wind up identifying with the characters as though you know them. The space of liminality feels as vivid and deep as the ocean tides in this way. So to hear Burnett find greater peace and perspective on “the liminal space” is like taking a breath out (on her behalf and maybe your own as well). A calm after chaos from amidst the eye of a hurricane. Surviving humanity through the lens of this existence is hard, and the artist paints it for the listener like a veteran of her craft.

That’s the sincere kind of love in music that reaches down to give you frisson, that makes you feel. It may not be Cinderella with a glass slipper or a rom-com sitcom meet-cute, but liminality succeeds because it’s a slice of life truly lived. Nobody comes in to write the perfect “happy ending” or sanitize and sand down the rough edges. Emily Rose Burnett does the damn thing by writing, producing, recording, and engineering it all herself. This is HER story, and for that alone she better get the flowers she deserves on this superb introduction of an album.

Listen to liminality below, and follow Emily across social media, including here on Substack!