Emmy The Great-Second Love: a certified golden touch with pop songwriting

Not counting her rather brilliant collaborative seasonal 2011 album, This is Christmas (with former partner Tim Wheeler, of Ash), this is Emma Lee Moss's first album of original material since her second album, Virtue (2011). A lot has happened to the Hong Kong-born songwriter in the meantime and, in strictly emotional terms, it isn't pretty. Her 2009 debut album is called First Love, and so we are in the territory of follow-up confessionals, a series of songs documenting heartache, love lost and, to a degree, gained. We can be grateful that Moss has a certified golden touch when it comes to pop songwriting – it means that tracks as lyrically despondent as Swimming Pool, Social Halo, Never Go Home and Lost in You are never fully covered with a blanket of melancholy. Third album, second lovely. emmythegreat.com