Emma-Jean Thackray
Weirdo
Release Date: Apr 25, 2025
Genre(s): Jazz
Record label: Brownswood Recordings
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Album Review: Weirdo by Emma-Jean Thackray
Excellent, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 4
An album born of grief that is unafraid to take risks and, in so doing, underlines a huge talent Emma-Jean Thackray‘s second album originally started out as something very different. The follow-up to 2021’s Yellow was intended to be an exploration of neurodiversity – Thackeray is both autistic and has ADHD – and intended the album’s title, Weirdo, to be a reclamation of sorts. But events have a habit of shaping outcomes, and at the start of 2023, Thackray’s long-term partner died suddenly of natural causes.
Based on rating 8/10
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.
Opinion: Fantastic
In interviews ahead of the release of this second full-length LP, Emma-Jean Thackray has spoken more than once of how making it saved her life. That anyone could craft work so head-spinningly euphoric, so joyous and life-affirming, as a deliberate response to the unmooring felt following the death of their partner and amid an ongoing war with their own mental health, is a kind of miracle. But that's just the start of what's marvellous about this magnificent record.
Opinion: Fantastic
Although its extraordinary music does plenty of the talking, it's worth mentioning 'Weirdo' and its creator's equally-extraordinary background. A neurodivergent woman born into a working class family in Yorkshire (a rare jazz origin story); Emma-Jean Thackray has grown into one of the UK's most interesting and accomplished nu jazz auteurs. In 2023, she suffered the unimaginably-awful sudden loss of her partner.
'Weirdo'
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