Dot Allison – Exaltation of Larks

• 22nd Sep 2007

It’s been 5 years since Dot Allison’s last solo album. ‘We Are Science’ was a brilliant experimentation of sound, vocals and electronic disturbance. But even on that piece Allison, like in her first more pop orientated solo album, found time for more simmering acoustic work. And it’s in this new album that she focuses on that kind of work – making it her first album to focus primarily on a certain genre.

Psychedelia is a word that she has been using a lot to describe this work. Working with some well known writers and producers of this music her personal love for the genre is ringing true beyond measure. Dot Allison has always produced very good and always interesting results in the past, but there seems to be a commitment in this album like no other she has expressed before.

Fans have were already given a taste of this new work last autumn when she released the EP ‘Beneath the Ivy.’ The title track from that release ‘Quicksand’ is also featured on this album in an alternate version.

Opening with ‘Allelujah’ she reminds us just how in and out of the wind her voice comes and goes. Whispery, Beautiful and Haunted at the same time bringing an exhausted intonation to her approach with leaves a ‘lost girl’ meets ‘death bed’ quality looming.

The quality continues with ‘Thief of Me’ which rightly has been selected as the first single of the album. Majestic in all of of its accoustic and string arranged splendour; there is a real sense of dramatoc gravity that she is lending the music.

Things only seem to take very unpredicatble turns in the songe finale’The Latitude and longitude of Mystery,’ which with its drum roll procession, and very well… Psychedelic guitar and sounds spirals down to the fade out at the end.

With her varied musical past in both Solo and collaborative efforts it will be interesting to see where her music goes from here. It’s seems pre-determined that she will at the very least always touch upon this style, but whether she decides to firmly plant her feet here for the remainder of her career or continue to experiment with other sounds is as yet unseen. Either way the results are bound to be nothing short of captivating.