Dot Allison - Exaltation Of Larks

Who’s a pretty bird, then?

It’s the collective noun for them, you see. Like a murder of crows or an ostentation of peacocks. Dot Allison, however, is not your common-or-garden feather-light songbird. Frontwoman of Edinburgh trip-poppers One Dove in the early 90s, she’s worked with Kevin Shields, Arab Strap and Death In Vegas (on the tremendous Dirge). It may seem a disappointment that she’s ‘gone folk’, but save your sighs: Beth Orton this ain’t. The languid Hallelujah eases you into a set of haunting psych-folk that recalls Beth Gibbons’ solo work, Allison’s beatific, breathy voice always keeping on the right side of decorous. The mainly sparse, melancholic songs, built around woozy fiddle and banjo are given depth by delicate touches of trippy, unsettling echo and distortion, and the dark warmth of her Bobbie Gentry tones. The muffled screaming that introduces Tall Flowers and Allison’s gently intoned, “His bellowed lack of words makes my jaw ache as would a right hook,” in particular hint at a darkness behind the pale dawn beauty of the album.

If you were being very stringent, you could say it was a little onenote, but hell, what a note, and at 10 gorgeous tracks, it hardly outstays its welcome. Dot on.

Cooking Vinyl | COOKCD 405

Reviewed by Emily Mackay
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