EMMA JEAN THACKRAY – WEIRD (Parlophone) (2025)

Produced, performed, recorded, mixed, and arranged in her South London flat, Weirdo was originally conceived as a strategy to speak about her struggles with mental health—Thackray is autistic and has ADHD. Emma-Jean insists ‘weirdo’ can be positive, suggesting something different like Byony Gordon’s Book “There is No Such Thing as Normal.” Her 2021 LP ‘Yellow’ was a great success. This album surpasses even ‘Yellow’ as Emma-Jean exposes her inner torments. The opening vignette ’Something Wrong with Your Mind’ sets her stall out. After the title track there is an agonised ‘Stay’ then the heartbreaking ‘Let Me Sleep’ with reference to depression. Hardly dancefloor music then? Well, maybe not but certainly compelling jazz if I could label it, ‘Please Leave Me Alone’ stops when it has barely begun and ‘Save Me’ (from myself) has got the beat. 19 tracks over just under an hour I don’t think I want to say much more except that this is an astonishingly good album that is difficult to define: full of soul and funk and verging on gospel to mix and mingle with the jazz, superbly produced and ingenuously constructed.