Emily Forst takes her place on the blue-eyed soul stage with self-made 2012 debut album, “Here We Go.” After a bitter breakup, the sultry songwriter resolved to record her debut album at NYC’s legendary Avatar Studios, and put it all down on tape. The album is a testament to her diverse musical influences, from NYC’s singer-songwriter scene of the late ’60s/early ’70s, to Billie Holiday-esque ballads, to stadium rock. The result is a ten-track album of masterful craft, musicianship, and deeply emotive vocals that pull it all together. Although all audiences will take something away from the universal themes of the album (heartbreak, breakdown, and eventual hope), audiophiles searching for fresh chord progressions, high levels of musicianship and polished, without-being-slick production, will find her music particularly rewarding. These songs, with hooks and lyrics that linger, will stay with you long after the music has finished playing. True to life, the good and the bad tend to come together in her songs. She blends the many shades of gray of an emotion with striking precision. The upbeat track “Here We Go” finds her leaving a relationship like “a broken bottle trying to make it out to sea.” The song “Fall Awake” has layers fragile, smoky vocals over the rock-forward, heavy drums and overdriven guitars underneath. Where does the heartbreak come from? Emily relates that, “in 2011, my boyfriend and I broke up. Everything I had built for five years in NYC seemed to be crashing down around me. I essentially locked myself in my apartment for three months and finished writing these songs as a way of coping with everything I felt. I was determined to make something positive out of all the pain and confusion I was lost under. It became my first album.” She began writing the songs, starting with Fall Awake, at the age of 16, after spending a white night in NYC’s Chinatown. The lyrics, “And you and I, let’s get acquainted with the night” echo the sultry, subtle sexuality that underlies the record. She notes, “I was always impressed with singers like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. They sang using breath and timing. It’s like they told the story in suggestion. That takes real artistry.” Some of the songs took only a few hours to form, and some took years. “Thomas came to me like a flash of lightning. Words, melody, chords- boom! All at once, and the version I wrote in a few hours is essentially the one on the record. Song I Never Wrote took about ten years. On the day I sang the vocals in the studio, I was still scribbling down lyrics, trying to get it right.” Will we have to wait another ten years for a second record? ”Ha! I hope not!” Emily was influenced by her father’s record collection growing up. “More than what was playing on the radio, I fell in love with my Dad’s LP collection. There were a lot of great singers from the 60’s and 70’s, and a lot of jazz. Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Coltrane… Appalachian folk tunes,disco, you name it.” At the age of 14, while attending high school in Maynooth, Ireland, she discovered Jeff Buckley’s “Grace.” She reminisces, “I remember a friend giving it to me, and just hating it the first time listening. I accidentally cracked the cover, and had to buy her another CD at Tower Records. I kept the cracked copy and kept listening. It was the first album that had such a strong effect on me. I kept listening, and grew to be so touched by the emotional rawness of his voice, and the pain he just bled out on the tape. It’s the album that’s influenced me the most by a long shot.” There’s also a fair amount of scholarship in the music. “I’ve always been interested in classical music. I started violin when I was 7 and studied classical guitar in college, ultimately deciding to major in Music Composition. There’s probably some of that in the songs too.” On what she hopes her listeners get from the album she said, “Whatever you need. These songs are here for you to take what you need from them. I guess I feel that it’s all about just saying what feels honest, and then letting the music speak for itself.”