The new album from Dot Allison, the Scottish singer's first in more than a decade, reaffirms the power of the silence between notes. Strikingly intimate, Heart-Shaped Scars, out on Friday via SA Recordings, takes its place on the shelf next to the first record from The Blue Nile, certain Arab Strab recordings, and some from Mogwai. Maybe there's something in the water up in Scotland, but this record from Allison, like those from her countrymen, reveals just how much can be done with a combination of precision and grace. That Dot's voice is as lush as ever certainly helps too, I think.
With Heart-Shaped Scars, Dot Allison stakes out territory that's part folk, part minimalism, and part post-rock. And while a number like "Long Exposure" has a quiet power, there's likely another, like "Constellations", where the instrumentation feels like it's holding in some tremendous emotive force, with Dot the messenger conveying the words. As equally strong, if not more subdued, "Can You Hear Nature Sing?" is an airy ghost of a tune, a memory being sung, even as the stately "Cue the Tears" finds Dot in the vicinity of the sort of graceful place that Virginia Astley once ruled as her own. That number, and the elegantly stretched-out "Forever's Not Much Time" are clear highlights here, the simple and serene march forward of each track progressing towards a sense of something very nearly holy.
What's here is chamber pop, with the pieces refined, and others whittled away. The strings and mellow lurch of "Love Died in Our Arms" seem like elements from a club number, only here in the service of a composition that feels like the sound of time stopping. Like nearly anything from the acts I mentioned at the start, this new Dot Allison record is a comedown album, the sound you'd relish as the first rays of the sun hit the horizon, after your long night out. It makes sense, despite the huge stylistic differences, that Allison's history includes work with Andrew Weatherall and Massive Attack as this album has a similar, end-of-the-party vibe. In a sense, Heart-Shaped Scars imagines new settings for the fixtures of both folk and electronic forms, with Dot Allison's work here being some of the best of her entire career.
Heart-Shaped Scars is out on Friday via SA Recordings.
More details on Dot Allison via the official website.
[Photo: Maria Mochnacz]