Emma Smith

Debut albums rarely land this fully formed. The Huntress went straight to number one in the UK jazz charts the week it was released, and listening to it now it is not hard to hear why: this is not a collection of songs assembled to introduce a new face, it is a proper artistic statement from someone who already knew exactly what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it.

The album moves with real intelligence between originals and standards, and the originals are the revelation. "Stolen Child" weaves Smith's own lyrics around the W.B. Yeats poem and sets the whole thing in a modal folk-inflected frame that sits outside the usual jazz vocalist playbook. It should not work as well as it does. That it works completely is a sign of the compositional confidence Smith was already operating with at this point.

Stan Sulzmann's saxophone on the selected tracks adds a warmth and authority that the trio alone could not provide, and his work on "I'll Be Seeing You" in particular gives the standard a bittersweet weight that Smith's vocal floats over with complete ease. Her tone at this period has a slightly smoky quality, intimate without being coy, emotionally direct without pushing.

The title track opens the record and sets the terms. There is a self-possession here, a sense of a performer who is neither asking for approval nor performing vulnerability. She is the huntress. She knows where she is going. After a decade of working the UK jazz circuit, appearing with the Puppini Sisters, and building a live reputation, the debut record finally gave that reputation something to stand on. It has held up completely.

Nine years between albums is a long time, and in those nine years the personality that was already present on The Huntress had sharpened into something considerably more pointed. Meshuga Baby arrived in June 2022 and announced itself with complete confidence. Within weeks it had millions of streams, radio play from Jamie Cullum on BBC Radio 2 and Cerys Matthews on BBC 6 Music, and a Grammy consideration that confirmed what the listeners already knew.

The title is a play on "meshuga," the Yiddish word for crazy, and Smith has been explicit about the connection: it is the word that gets applied to ambitious women who are not afraid to have opinions, who push back against the structures arranged against them, who insist on being heard. The album's cover image, her social media presence in the run-up to release, the wit and specificity of her Instagram posts documenting the making of the record: all of it was part of the same statement. The music and the personality are the same thing.

"Makin' Whoopee" in her hands becomes something between a lament and a knowing comedy. "But Not For Me" has a directness that cuts through any temptation to wallow. "People" is the kind of track that could easily tip into bombast and instead lands as something genuinely moving, because she never loses the intimacy even when the material calls for scale. These are songs she has internalized completely.

Samuel Watts and the rhythm section she assembled for this record deserve enormous credit. They do not play behind her. They play with her, responding to every choice she makes with their own musical intelligence, creating a conversation rather than an accompaniment. Meshuga Baby is the record that made the wider world pay attention, but it is also just a very good jazz vocal album by a singer at the top of her game.

Smith gave this record away. Not as a promotional gesture, not as a loss leader, but as a direct gift to the people on her mailing list who had followed her work through the years before the mainstream caught up. It is a live recording made at a private venue in Mayfair, and it has the warmth and ease of a musician playing for an audience she trusts.

Thirteen tracks, all standards, and the choices tell you a lot about where her instincts lie. "Misty" is a standard that reveals exactly what a vocalist does or does not have, and Smith has more than enough: she understands that the key to that song is restraint, that Erroll Garner wrote a melody that is already emotionally loaded and does not need pushing. She delivers it clean and lets the melody do its work.

"Frim Fram Sauce" is a chance to show a different side, the humor and sass that the more serious material on Meshuga Baby sometimes kept in check. "No More Blues" brings a Brazilian warmth into the set that breaks the all-American songbook feel at exactly the right moment. And "Pure Imagination" as a closer is a choice that would seem risky on paper and lands as something close to perfect.

The trio plays here with the looseness that only comes from long familiarity. Watts in particular sounds completely at home, responding to Smith's choices in real time rather than executing a predetermined arrangement. This is what a working band sounds like. The fact that Smith sent this record out for free says something about her relationship with her audience that a hundred press releases could not convey.

The third studio album, and the title earns its punctuation mark. Hat-Trick draws together material from three EPs and weaves it into something that works as a coherent statement, which is harder than it sounds when the source material comes from different sessions and different contexts. That it hangs together as well as it does reflects a genuine curatorial intelligence.

The repertoire here sits deep in the 1950s American songbook, and Smith approaches it with a straightforwardness that the decade's pop-jazz material rewards. "Night and Day" has been recorded so many times that there are almost no approaches left untried, and yet she finds a way into it that feels specific to her rather than like a reference to someone else's definitive version. That is the mark of a singer who has internalized the material rather than studied it from the outside.

"Chelsea Bridge" is the left-field choice that holds the whole set in place. Billy Strayhorn's ballad sitting in the middle of what could have been a predictable standards collection reframes everything around it, and the way Smith and Watts handle the harmony together suggests they have been living with this material for a while. "Where or When" and "No Moon at All" are the other standouts: both songs where she reads the lyric with such complete attention that they stop feeling like old songs and start feeling like something being worked out in real time.

"Matchmaker, Matchmaker" opening the record is an inspired call: it signals immediately that this is not going to be a conventional approach to a conventional program. The exclamation point in the title is not false advertising. There is joy in this record, and joy in good jazz vocal performance is considerably harder to manufacture than sadness or sophistication.

La Reserve Records does not sign artists casually. The LA-based label has built its reputation on a specific kind of sophisticated, production-conscious jazz, and Smith is the first UK artist to join the roster. Bitter Orange, released in the summer of 2025 and launched with debut US performances at Catalina's in Los Angeles and a show in Palm Springs, is the record that justifies all of that confidence.

The new rhythm section matters. Jamie Safir brings a slightly different harmonic sensibility than Samuel Watts, more influenced by pop production, and the result gives the album a sound that sits between the intimate club feel of the earlier records and something more deliberately crafted. Conor Chaplin on bass, best known for his work with Jacob Collier, has a fluency and rhythmic intelligence that pushes the arrangements in ways the trio has not been pushed before.

"I'm The Greatest Star" sets the terms from the first track: this is a record about a woman who knows her value and is not going to pretend otherwise. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" in her hands is less about romantic intoxication and more about the clarity that follows it. "London Pride" is the statement track, Noel Coward on an American label, worn without apology. The "Funny Face" into "My Funny Valentine" medley is the most musically ambitious moment on the record and it lands completely.

The record closes on "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," a gentle, almost whispering exit after twelve tracks of considerable confidence. It is a reminder that behind the wit and the self-possession there is a vocalist of real emotional depth. Bitter Orange is the record that will introduce Emma Smith to audiences who do not follow the UK jazz scene, and it is more than good enough to hold their attention once it has it.