Emily Barker (born 2 December 1980) is an Australian singer-songwriter, musician and composer. Her music has featured as the theme to BBC dramas ''
Wallander Wallander may refer to:
TV, film, books
* Kurt Wallander, a fictional Swedish police inspector in novels by Henning Mankell
:*Wallander (film series), ''Wallander'' (film series), Swedish-language television films of the Wallander stories starring ...
'' and ''
The Shadow Line''. With multi-instrumental trio the Red Clay Halo, she recorded four albums: ''Photos.Fires.Fables.'' (2006), ''Despite the Snow'' (2008), ''Almanac'' (2011), ''Dear River'' (2013), before commencing a solo career with ''The Toerag Sessions'' (2015), ''
Sweet Kind of Blue'' (2017), ''A Dark Murmuration of Words'' (2020), and ''Flight Path Rhymes'' (2021). Other projects include Vena Portae (with Dom Coyote and Ruben Engzell), Applewood Road (with
Amy Speace and
Amber Rubarth), and ''Room 822'' (2022) with Lukas Drinkwater.
Career
2002–2007
Emily travelled to the UK in 2002, and was first based in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
where she collaborated with guitarist Rob Jackson. They formed a band called the-low-country which released two albums, ''Welcome to the-low-country'' (2003) and ''The Dark Road'' (2004), tracks from which enjoyed plays on
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft (30 August 1939 – 25 October 2004), better known as John Peel, was an English radio presenter and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original disc jockeys on BBC Radio 1, broadcasting regularly from ...
's BBC radio show. In October 2005 Emily won Country Song of the Year and Regional Song of the Year awards at the annual
West Australian Music Songwriting Awards. Also in 2005, Emily started work on her debut solo album, ''Photos.Fires.Fables.'', released on Emily's own label Everyone Sang. The release of this album saw the birth of ''The Red Clay Halo'', an all-female trio of Anna Jenkins (violin, viola), Jo Silverston (cello, bass, banjo, saw), and Gill Sandell (accordion, piano, flute, guitar).
2007–2010
The band's first album released under the name Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo, ''Despite The Snow'', was recorded in live sessions in a 16th-century barn in Norfolk. Released in November 2008 on Everyone Sang, the album again garnered much praise. In late 2008, the album's opening track "Nostalgia" was discovered by composer
Martin Phipps who re-recorded it with Emily for use as the theme tune for the hit television series ''
Wallander Wallander may refer to:
TV, film, books
* Kurt Wallander, a fictional Swedish police inspector in novels by Henning Mankell
:*Wallander (film series), ''Wallander'' (film series), Swedish-language television films of the Wallander stories starring ...
'' on BBC1 starring Northern Irish actor
Kenneth Branagh
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh ( ; born 10 December 1960) is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at RADA in London and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. List of award ...
. The first series, which attracted over 6 million viewers per episode, won a slew of awards, including several BAFTAs and a
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society (RTS) is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present, and future. It is the oldest television society in the world. It currently has fourteen r ...
award for its theme tune.
2011

In February 2011, ''Almanac'' was released, once again on Everyone Sang. The release of this album was accompanied by sessions for
Cerys Matthews on
6 Music and
Radio 4's ''
Loose Ends'', while the single "Little Deaths" was record of the week on
Nemone
Nemone Metaxas (born 3 November 1972 in Chester, Cheshire), often billed simply as Nemone, is an English DJ, radio presenter and television presenter/producer. She is also a trained psychotherapist practising in West and Central London. She is ...
's show on 6 Music. Emily and the band again went on the road in the UK, culminating in a complete performance of ''Almanac'' at
St Giles-in-the-Fields church in London. ''Almanac'' was jointly funded by spareroom.com, and a fan-funded campaign on
Pledgemusic.com.
The song "Pause" from ''Almanac'' was the theme tune for a major 2011
BBC2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matter, incorporating genres such as comedy, drama and ...
drama serial, ''
The Shadow Line'', starring
Chiwetel Ejiofor and
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston (; born 16 February 1964) is an English actor whose work has encompassed Hollywood blockbusters and arthouse films, television dramas, Shakespearean stage performances and science fiction, most notably the Ninth Doctor, ni ...
. Martin Phipps again adapted the song for the title sequence.
2012
Early in 2012, Emily began a working relationship with producer
Calum Malcolm, having been introduced to him by Gilad Tiefenbrun of
Linn Products
Linn Products is an engineering company that manufactures hi-fi and audio equipment. Founded by Ivor Tiefenbrun in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1972, the company is best known as the manufacturer of the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable.
From 2007 Linn was o ...
. Emily and The Red Clay Halo went into Gorbals Sound studios in Glasgow and recorded four songs, including a new version of Emily's murder ballad duet, "Fields of June", which had first appeared on ''Photos.Fires.Fables.''; on this version, the male vocal part was sung by
Frank Turner
Francis Edward Turner (born 28 December 1981) is an English Punk rock, punk and Folk music, folk singer-songwriter from Meonstoke, Hampshire. He began his career as the vocalist of post-hardcore band Million Dead, then embarked upon a primaril ...
and was released as a limited 7" white vinyl on
Xtra Mile Recordings. The band then went back in to Gorbals Sound with Calum Malcolm in June 2012 to record their next album, ''Dear River''. Shortly after completing the recordings, Emily, Anna, Gill and Jo were invited by Frank Turner to perform with him at the Olympics Opening Ceremony.
In the autumn of 2012, Emily toured Europe alongside
Chuck Ragan,
Cory Branan,
Rocky Votolato
Rocky Votolato (born March 8, 1977, in Dallas, Texas, United States) is an American indie and folk singer-songwriter. He was also a member of the rock group Waxwing. in 2025, he started a new band called Suzzallo with bandmate Rudy Gajadhar on d ...
, and
Jay Malinowski as part of
The Revival Tour., and the day after the last date on that tour, on 21 November 2012, Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo played a sold out headline show at London's
Union Chapel.
2013
''Dear River'' was released on 8 July 2013, charting at 99 in the official UK album charts, 23 in the Independent Albums chart, and 7 in the Record Store Albums chart, spending 4 weeks in the top 20. Reviews were very favourable in both mainstream and specialist press:
Will Hodgkinson
Will Hodgkinson is a journalist and author from London (born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne), England. He is the chief rock and pop critic for ''The Times'' newspaper and contributes to ''Mojo (magazine), Mojo'' magazine. He has written for ''The Guardian ...
in ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' gave the album a four star lead review, saying it contained "heartfelt songwriting... bridging the gap between folk, country and Fleetwood Mac".
2014
Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo released a special limited edition 10" vinyl EP for
Record Store Day
Record Store Day is a semi-annual event established in 2008 to "celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store". Held on one Saturday (typically the third) every April and every Black Friday in November, the day brings together f ...
on 19 April 2014. They celebrated the release by doing a tour of independent record stores, performing at seven stores over the holiday weekend
Working once again with Martin Phipps, Emily composed music for ''
The Keeping Room'' starring
Sam Worthington and
Brit Marling
Brit Marling (born August 7, 1982) is an American actress and screenwriter. She rose to prominence after starring in several films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, including '' Sound of My Voice'' (2011), '' Another Earth'' (2011), a ...
. She then went on to compose her first feature-length soundtrack for the UK movie ''
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hector (; , ) was a Trojan prince, a hero and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. He is a major character in Homer's ''Iliad'', where he leads the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing c ...
'' (
2015
2015 was designated by the United Nations as:
* International Year of Light
* International Year of Soil __TOC__
Events
January
* January 1 – Lithuania officially adopts the euro as its currency, replacing the litas, and becomes ...
) starring
Peter Mullan, released in December 2015.
2020
Emily Barker release
''A Dark Murmuration of Words''in 2020. This album was inspired by a concern with the impact of climate change on the natural world. Emily Barker explained: "Last year the climate crisis was very much at the forefront of all of our conversations and thoughts, wondering what we can do to adapt, and feeling helpless and guilty and angry and upset and all these things"
Emily Barker commented: ""Environment and equality are very important to me, and it’s finding the right perspective to write that from and being respectful of the people in society who are suffering".
In an interview with Bernard Zuel, Emily Barker elaborated upon her intentions, with the album:
It was really a response to a lot of what was going on in 2019 with the collective awakening of the environmental crisis. And it was terrifying. It’s something that I’d been aware of before, and I was brought up by parents who were very conscious of that anyway, but I think a lot of people really looked at the personal impact in a big way and started realising the scale of this emergency. It’s so hard to compute but for me, writing songs helps me to make sense of things that I can’t process.
Emily Barker commented that the album involves a "lots of processing the emotional response to the environmental crisis".
Emily Barker also covered a Billy Bragg song, 'Can't Be There Today', in 2020 as part of a campaign to save musical venues during the COVID-19 crisis.
2021
Emily Barker released an alternative version of ''A Dark Murmuration of Words'' in 2021 – calle
''Flight Path Rhymes'' She discussed the reworking of the album:
''Recording A Dark Murmuration of Words was a wonderful immersive experience that involved my live band and multiple conversations with producer Greg Freeman. It was only as the album was coming together that I realised how all the songs intertwined...how, despite their different subjects, there was an underlying theme that tied them all together.''
''That realisation found an outlet not only in the album itself, but also in a poem I wrote soon after the recording sessions were over. I've always been a fan of poetry, but until a couple of years ago, I'd never written any myself. I took the plunge by signing up to an online course, and began to share my new work with some Stroud-based poet friends. I found it an exciting new outlet for conveying thoughts and ideas that wouldn't necessarily fit within the confines of a song."''
2022
Emily Barker and Lukas Drinkwater released an album of covers calle
''Room 822''in 2022, which were recorded during quarantine isolation during the COVID-19 crisis. Emily Barker explained her choices of covers:
''I found myself gravitating towards songs that meant a lot to me in my late teens growing up in WA – songs I would put on the tape deck of my yellow VW Beetle while driving to the coast with the windows down, singing at the top of my lungs. From that period we chose 'Black the Sun' by Alex Lloyd, 'Mr. Milk' by You Am I, 'Tomorrow' by Silverchair and 'The Captain' by Kasey Chambers. I also listened to anything and everything by The Waifs, and for obvious reasons, we chose 'London Still'. The Church's 'Under the Milky Way' and Deborah Conway's 'Will You Miss Me When You're Sober' were staples as I was growing up. It was great to share these songs and artists with Lukas, and get his thoughts on them – turns out that he was also a big Silverchair fan as a teenager.''
''To complete the album we chose some more contemporary songs which we both knew. 'Boys Will be Boys' by Stella Donnelly we discovered when visiting a record shop in Fremantle a couple of years ago when we asked the retailer if he could recommend anything new. He was glowing about Stella’s EP 'Thrush Metal' which we bought on the spot. We then had the pleasure of sharing a stage with Stella at Billy Bragg’s 'Songwriters in the Round' at Glastonbury Festival in 2019. We couldn't not choose a Nick Cave song – after much discussion we landed on 'Push the Sky Away' – nor could we miss Paul Kelly, but rather than delving into his illustrious past, we chose one of his most recent songs, 'Sleep, Australia, Sleep', which shows he has lost none of his urgency and relevance as a songwriter.''
Fanny Lumsden appears on the version of 'Under the Milky Way', and
Jack Carty appears on 'Black the Sun'.
Discography
Emily Barker
*''Photos.Fires.Fables.'' (2006)
*''The Toerag Sessions'' (2015)
*''
Sweet Kind of Blue'' (2017)
*
A Dark Murmuration of Words' (2020)
*
Flight Path Rhymes' (2021)
*''Fragile as Humans'' (2024)
Emily Barker & Lukas Drinkwater
Room 822(2022)
Marry Waterson & Emily Barker
*''A Window to Other Ways'' (2019)
Applewood Road
*''Applewood Road'' (2016)
Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo
*''Despite The Snow'' (2008)
*''Almanac'' (2011)
*''Dear River'' (2013)
*''Songs Beneath the River'' EP (2014)
Vena Portae
*''Vena Portae'' (2014)
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barker, Emily
1980 births
Living people
Australian folk singers
English folk musicians
English folk singers
21st-century Australian women singers
21st-century Australian singers
English women singer-songwriters
English singer-songwriters
People from Bridgetown, Western Australia
21st-century English women singers
21st-century English singers
Australian women singer-songwriters
21st-century Australian singer-songwriters
Australian women folk singers
British women folk singers
21st-century British folk musicians
21st-century Australian folk musicians