Music: Bitterness and wine: The heart-grabbing blues of Emme Woods

Feverish and heady, it’s a track that seethes in the shadows only to collar you and deliver two lungfuls of home truths. “The only thing left now/is bitterness and wine,” she sings, as her guitar clangs into the distance. Like the sultry, Spain-shot video directed by James Vincent Gillespie and photographer Brian Sweeney, ‘I Don’t Drink To Forget’ recalls the sleepwalking blues of Mazzy Star. And though there’s a definite fragility there – the song threatens to come loose from its fraying moorings without notice – rather than Hope Sandoval’s pretty resignation, Woods’ songs have an intensity that’s often fearsome. Because hers are of the truly difficult relationship stuff, the viscera-twisting entanglements, disappointments and frustrations that have you going home with a clinking blue plastic bag; the kind the Afghan Whigs and PJ Harvey built careers on.

Though Woods’ youth may surprise some – she’ll turn just 22 in April – maybe it shouldn’t. Those are the years when big life events can be felt more intensely, often leaving a branding mark on your soul. The six tracks that she’s currently working on with producer Brian Hurren, Runrig’s keyboard player, for forthcoming mini album It’s My Party, due for release on May 12, include ‘Lullaby For a Lost Soul’. It’s a two-minute kiss-off as tart as a lemon drop and features a lyric that’ll give your ticker a wee jolt.

“My songs are all true but I may exaggerate sometimes,” she says. “It still feels like real life though because that is what’s going on in my head. It depends on the song but sometimes they will change from day to day, with my mood and how my feelings are changing on things. So it can be a case of: ‘On the Tuesday, it was about this. On the Friday, it was about this.’ But yes, they’re all based on real life. It’s not that my life is miserable, but there certainly can be miserable points through a day when you think of certain things.”

Woods wasn’t always a lonesome blueswoman singing of love’s angst and searing wounds. As recently as this time last year, under her birth name Morgan Woods, she headed Something Someone, a folk trio in which she plucked a double bass alongside a guitarist and fiddle-player.

“When Ian [Smith, co-founder of Last Night From Glasgow] first came to see me at Celtic Connections last year things were very different, I didn’t even have an electric guitar. In February he came to a solo show and I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I feel that every six months I have one.

“He was going to put out the song in March but when it came to getting the actual test pressing of the record done, I changed the name and was rebirthed as Emme Woods.”

Pronouncing Emme as simply “M” in reference to Morgan, Woods had felt hemmed in.

“It’s a purely personal thing, but when you’re playing a folk gig there’s a sense that it needs to be a bit ‘proper’ and polite.

I would sometimes swear and would find that hard. Not that folk gigs can’t be insanely fun. But I was scared to sing what I wanted to and be the way I wanted to be as a folk musician.

“Once I’d decided to make that change it became fun; I was like: ‘this is the way things should be’. I found it much easier to write the way I wanted.

“There are great folk musicians out there who can write in that way within the genre, like Rachel Sermani. She can write tragic, heartfelt songs and still make it folky. Or people like Laura Marling, who I think brings a completely different side to folk. But, for me, I find I feel much more free to write whatever I wish to without worrying: ‘Can I say this?’”

There’s a dynamic, on-the-hoof quality to Woods both in conversation and her material. Her powerful, resonating voice is without affectation; this is surely just how she sings in the shower.

“My mum used to say I had a voice like a cats’ choir,” she says with a laugh. “Growing up I never thought I could sing. My sister, like a lot of other girls, was singing in this Beyonce style whereas I would sing along to the men on the radio. There’s only one Beyonce, I thought, so why try and replicate her?”

Unlike many musicians of similar years, Woods didn’t grow up in a musical household. It wasn’t until her late teens that she began playing, largely teaching herself keyboard, piano, bass and guitar. The fact her day job is as all-ages tutor at Hurren’s Stirling Rock School is another marker of her raw talent.

“No one in my family even listened to music, apart from my granddad in Orkney,” says Woods, who grew up in Alloa.

“He had about four records. The Beatles was one, Elvis another – I grew up thinking he was the most amazing man who’d ever walked the planet. I still think he’s pretty great. I took just Higher music and mainly self taught. After school I had an audition to study at university in Aberdeen and I thought I could teach myself the piano in a week. It went terribly, but I’m glad I still did it.”

It’s My Party will be trailed by the single ‘I’ve Been Runnin’’, a jazzier, relatively more upbeat affair featuring trumpet-player/bassist Neil McKenzie and guitarist Jamie Logie, both of whom are regular members of her band. On this tour of Scotland she’ll be accompanied by another trumpet-player, Nikol Dragneva, pianist Katie Doyle and drummer Gary Gilmore.

Woods is empathic that Something Someone fans are more than welcome; many have remained faithful through her transition.

“A lot of people from the Something Someone days come along to my gigs,” she says. “Now, the age range is massive whereas before there were hardly any younger people.

I think it’s really healthy that so many different ages come. My gran will say to me: ‘I’d love to come and see you but it’ll just be young people’ and I’m like: ‘Gran, at least half the audience is well over 40’. Not that that’s old, but older people shouldn’t feel that they can’t still fit in.”

I’ve Been Runnin’ is out as a digital-only release on 3 February Emme Woods plays Glasgow’s Hug and Pint on 5 February with Blair Dunlop and Doghouse Roses as part of Celtic Connections, 7.30pm, £9+bf. Tickets from bit.ly/EmmeCCs She then plays: 8 February, La Belle Angele, Edinburgh; 9 February, Stirling – email stirlingdiypress@gmail.com for info; 11 February, The Green Room, Perth; 16 February, The Drouthy Cobbler, Elgin; 17 February, Mr C’s Bar, Thurso www.facebook.com/EmmeWoodsMusic www.lastnightfromglasgow.com --------------------------------------------------------------

THERE are couple of other Celtic Connections gigs of special note coming up: tomorrow, Woods’ Last Night From Glasgow labelmates Ette (aka TeenCanteen’s Carla J Easton in collaboration with Joe Kane, pictured above) play Glasgow’s Broadcast with psychedelic Irish duo Morrissey & Marshall and idiosyncratic folkster Chrissy Barnacle. Doors 7pm. Tickets, £7 from bit.ly/EtteCCs

On January 29 at Glasgow’s Hug and Pint there will be a joint set from Law Holt and Callum Easter, two very singular solo artists on Edinburgh’s Soulpunk label. The remarkably-voiced Holt and Easter, something of an eccentric, John Cooper Clarke figure albeit with the eerie musical smarts to match his pithy lyrics, will alternately take the stage, pass the mic and collaborate.Doors 7.30pm. Tickets, £8 (+bf) from thehugandpint.com

Though not a Celtic Connections gig, the recently-announced gig from The Leather Corridor will be interesting – in surely a very good way – as the band features members of Big Ned, Older Lover, Tut Vu Vu and Sordid Sound System, quality goods merchants all.

They play the Rum Shack, Glasgow on Saturday, January 28 in an event supporting the MS Society Scotland. Doors 9pm, tickets £4.