Emma-Jean Thackray triumphs on Weirdo

Emma-Jean Thackray opts for a striking alternative approach on Weirdo, the West Yorkshire-born, London-based multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer’s second full length solo album.

Originally envisioned as a reflection on neurodivergence and mental health issues associated with viewing and processing the world differently (still audibly present in the themes of ‘othering’ present in the gracefully soaring title track), Weirdo changed course dramatically (and tragically) following the sudden passing of Thackray’s long-term partner in 2023.

Thackray has spoken of how music provided the only respite (or remedy, to cite one of the album’s song titles) from the emptiness and loss of motivation that followed the experience of devastating loss. Resultingly, while the lyrics on Weirdo are often startlingly unfiltered and unsparingly raw in their stark descriptions of spiraling mental health and overwhelming loss of purpose, the compositions frequently pulsate with a vibrancy and energy, suggesting that the joy of creating music is the one and only area that grief can’t quite corrupt.

This might suggest a messy collision of confusingly clashing moods, but Weirdo presents a startlingly assured evolution in Thackray’s music. 2021’s strong debut Yellow felt very much at home amongst the ever-growing produce of the ongoing UK jazz resurgence, as befits a musician who started out on brass instruments and whose background includes serious music studies at Royal Welsh College of Music. While still recognizably the work of the same artist (Thackray’s signature instrument trumpet pops up on the weightlessly shimmering “It’s Okay”), Weirdo (almost entirely performed and recorded by Thackray, working alone at her home studio) forefronts songs and songwriting, dressed in different amalgamations of jazz, funk, jazz-funk, contemporary soul, hip hop and rock.

The results are thoroughly compelling and refreshingly uncategorisable. The propulsive “Save Me” draws from the polyrhythmic buoyancy of afrobeat, whilst the fuzz-bass driven, dark-hued groove (echoes of Madlib’s genre-blending beat concoctions, maybe) of “Maybe Nowhere” suggests that funk and rock (combinations of which have not infrequently lead to crass atrocities) were born to mingle together. Elsewhere, the riotous P-funk swirl of “Black Hole” and the joyously ricocheting “Wanna Die” combine frank admissions of crumbling mental health and depression-fueled staring at the void with positively combustible, party-starting grooves. At 19 tracks, Weirdo presents a potentially overwhelming spread of sound, but it’s impossible to identify any flab or superfluous moments here: musically eclectically inspired, thematically deep and profound, Weirdo is a total triumph.