Emmy the Great: Virtue – review

After Emmy the Great's well-received debut album First Love , the band's songwriter Emma-Lee Moss got engaged and was subsequently jilted by her fiance, who discovered a religious calling. On this follow-up, Moss tries – wisely, it would seem – to deal with her experience at a remove, drawing on mythology, fairy tales and biblical stories to sing of love, loss and other matters. And yet the album's most affecting song, "Trellick Tower", is the one that deals most directly with her predicament. The rest of Virtue is cleverly written and carefully scored, but it only truly comes alive on that remarkable final song.