If you came of age during ‘Britpop’ and you incline towards the indie end of the market, the chances are that Dot Allison acts as a thread running between some of the more disparate elements of your CD Collection. After all, that’s her siren’s lament you can hear on Death In Vegas’ doom-laden lullaby ‘Dirge’ and that’s her duetting with Peter Doherty on his recent ‘Grace/Wastelands’ album.
Collaborations are great (and very much part of the mid-to-late nineties soundscape.) but can obfuscate a solo artist’s worth. Which is a real shame as, a decade on; Dot Allison’s solo debut really ought to be considered a classic of modern British electronica.
Partly due to the blessed-out euphoria of One Dove (her pervious band) and partly due to her gender, Allison was initially dubbed a ‘comedown queen’ which suggests something anodyne, like a proto-Duffy. Instead, it’s an album of two halves: Mani’s bass rumbling through album opener ‘coulor me’ and the propulsive ‘close your eyes’ conspire to give the record a hard, almost monochromatic feel.
The encroaching darkness, however, is counter-pointed by lighter touches, such as the album’s moment of pop brilliance ‘Did I Imagine You?’ (Featuring lyrics by Hal David.) Or the album’s evocative closer ‘In Winter Still’, highlighting Allison’s flair for lyrics: “there’s lipstick on the glass” she sings “the question left unasked.”
It’s a producer’s record too, best experienced in an immersive environment (on headphones or walking around post-industrial Manchester, in my experience.) Allowing the listener to be enveloped in its layered soundscape. However, to to simply call it a ‘producers record’ verges on the dismissive, particularly when both the arrangements and –as already noted—the lyrics are so carefully calibrated.
Slightly over a decade since its initial release, I was surprised to find how well the album held up. (The only track I’m slightly unenthused about remains ‘Mo’Pop’ and then only because it’s not quite as good as the others.) Which either suggests that electronica simply hasn’t advanced in the last ten years or that the album is just that classy. Either way: it’s aged a lot better than the majority of those ‘lads bands’ that were big around the turn of the century have…
