Emily Barker A Dark Murmuration Of Words CD

1st Single 'Return Me' is Emily's response to her progressive awareness of the threat to the environment, which awakened a need to re-invest in her own source and creativity. 'Return Me' is Barker's first solo release since her exquisite album 'A Sweet Kind Of Blue', and harks back to her signature song 'Nostalgia' (theme to BBC series Wallander). Written by Emily Barker, Solastalgia (/?s?l?'stald??/) is a neologism that describes a form of emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change.There was a watershed moment in 2019 when the critical degree to which we've ravaged our planet broke through into public consciousness. "My immediate response was the feeling that I needed to go 'home' - I needed to be beside my family, to know they were safe, to make up for all the years I've spent away from them. I needed to be in the first landscape I ever loved: the Blackwood River (Gigellup buerle in the Noongar tongue) that runs through the deep hills of Bridgetown and past my view looking out the window of our family home in the south west of Australia. I needed to know that it too was safe. The feeling wasn't just physical, it was also temporal - 'home' meant being drawn back to my childhood: naive and splashing in the river after school on hot, summer afternoons where crickets clicked a casual tempo and life felt immortal.I started to ask myself whether or not the path I am on - the one I've been on for many years - is still the right one in light of the sombre and overwhelming revelation that our earth is very sick. Whether the journey is leading me where I want to go, whether I still have hold of the reins, whether it is time at last to return to my first home - a question that seems to have no answer, despite the number of songs I have dedicated to it".