For a perpetually busy and inventive artist, the global pandemic must have seemed like a career-ending experience for Mitchel Emms, the former The Treatment frontman and star of numerous theatrical shows. As people adapted to the uncertain world, this event took the singer away from his natural home on the road, in front of audiences, to the solitary world of his own company, armed only with an array of instruments and a notebook.
Mitchel Emms – Euphoric Melancholy
Release Date: 26 September 2025
Words: Paul Monkhouse
This break from routine turned out to be a blessing in disguise as Mitchel Emms turned his attention to writing and recording his long-awaited second solo album, the follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Vertigo At History’s Edge.
Euphoric Melancholy is a deeply personal release, not only one where Emms wrote and performed it all, but also something that follows his own path over the past few years, the autobiographical nature forming itself into a concept album.
As befits the overall artistic style, this is a release heavy with a lot of the musical tropes that have traditionally gone hand in hand with the merest whiff of the words’ concept album’, a strong thread of something akin to progressive rock at its core.
This is not to say that Emms has gone full ’70s YES in everything, far from it as he is way too smart an operator for that. But certainly the introspective quality of the material shines with expansive and unhurried ideas that eschew ‘the get in, hit them hard and get out’ stylings of either his hard rock or commercial bread and butter demands.
With his complete control over the whole project, the polymathic performer has allowed himself to really drill into what is right for the album, but also, much to his credit, neatly sidesteps any or all of the navel-gazing that could have made it a self-indulgent slog.
Universal yet personal themes
What we have here is crisp and forceful, the ten tracks bring together universal yet personal themes and a cinematic soundscape that embraces modern rock laced with ’80s influences along with something a little more traditional. Producing the album himself, Mitchel Emms brings a modern sheen to proceedings yet never loses sight of the human soul that makes the foundation of all that it is.
The driving swirl of Isn’t It Beautiful kicks things off, its rock with a widescreen and accessible edge, giving the clearly cinematic and storytelling vision Emms has, the following Falling Star shimmering with a nostalgic ’80s influenced pop rock feel.
The euphoria continues with Endless Mirror, a bright, shining and magnificent track that sounds like a thousand fireworks going off in the synapses. Things turn distinctly prog rock-ish in the cosmic voyage of The Boy With The Light In His Eyes as touches of Pink Floyd peep through its skittering patina, Modern Living sharing the same DNA.
This feel stretches even further with Modern Living, the Dave Gilmour/Roger Waters sound, including something akin to late ’70s The Who, adding some extra grit and grounding the song in something more earthy yet equally as expansive.
Throughout, big themes are driven by big music, and there is a curiously comforting familiarity here that manages to stay on absolutely the right side of pastiche, the Nik Kershaw energy of All Let Go wonderfully warming.
Beautifully arranged and obviously carefully crafted, the closing triptych of the glistening cathedral of sound of Lost In Inner Space, an urgent cataclysm in Leaves Under Your Feet, and the huge and cathartic Dreaming Awake top everything off with an unbeatable display of emotional and musical pyrotechnics.
Truthful, raw and yet not too polished that the spirit is erased behind a wall of sound, Euphoric Melancholy may be one of the most honest and impressive albums you will hear all year.
Mitchel Emms releases Euphoric Melancholy on 26 September 2025 via Molano Music. For more details, visit linktr.ee/mitchelemms.
