Album Review

Dot Allison – Room 7 1/2

• 27th Aug 2009

Dot Allison is back with her fourth solo album. She is an artist who started off in very different realms in the early 90’s; she has since progressed through various incarnations of solo work from pop, stripped electro and acoustic Psychedelica.

Over the years she has collaborated with many a musician, even lending her voice to others works (Massive Attack, Death in Vegas). Here she has the joy of having long term live performance buddy Peter Doherty lend his talents as does musical legend Paul Weller.
The album begins with only her own voice demonstrating how fragile and enchanted it can be. Her tone is very whispery, but never at any moment is it not a powerful force in the music. Why Dot Allison has not been under more limelight’s is a wonder as she is very easy to enjoy and instantly recognisable. And beyond this is her tremendous charm as a songwriter and musician.

There is a variety of traits here making Room 7 ½ the first album by Dot to be less categorical than her previous efforts. It is no less of a whole however. It is perhaps closer to her previous album “Exaltation of Larks” in the heavy use of acoustic work, but there are escapes from this like in a very 60’s sounding “I Wanna Break your Heart” which features Doherty.

There is sometimes an element of chaos in her work such as in “Portrait of the sun” which closes the album. A rightly bonkers let-loose of music that Allison sometimes let’s out of the bag on most of the albums she has released. It is just astonishing the range of talent she has as a singer, songwriter and musician. But more so that she isn’t even more widely appreciated in the world.