Ann Scott
Album: Venus To The Sky
Label: Raghouse
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.annscott.net

Dublin singer-songwriter Ann is now four albums into her career. After a well-acclaimed 2004 debut (Poor Horse) came a wayward, ill-focused followup (We're Smiling) which brought, not entirely credibly, shades of alt-indie-rock and ambient trip-hop electronica to the mix. Album number three, 2010's Flo, allowed for better appreciation of Ann's enigmatic, pensive and sensual lyric writing through a sparser, if still often maddeningly reverberant, instrumental palette and a greater quotient of exclusively acoustic sounds. Each CD contained some quietly stunning material, but the promise didn't ever seem to be maintained over the span of a whole album.

Venus To The Sky is being heralded as a bold step forward, featuring a "heavyweight indie musical squad" (Karl Odlum, Dave Hingerty, Kim Porcelli, Katherine Atkinson, Gemma Hayes and Katell Keineg) providing a range of left-field guitars, synths and percussion. However, although Ann's mesmerising voice provides continuity and focus, even that degree of concentration is sometimes compromised by the woozy slouch, the (deliberate?) dislocation of the musical backdrops, which don't seem to want to settle anywhere in particular even when evoking a specific emotional state. And even there, it's not easy to gain much of a decent handle on the lyrics this time round, they just seem opaquely couched and not ideally audible (couldn't they be made available on her website f'rinstance?). Ann's distinctive voice is perhaps best heard on songs like Unite, with its reliable post-punk riff; Stripes, where a sweet, almost sickly keyboard mantra and offset pounding drumbeat provide a keen foil for Ann's restless musings; and the PJ Harvey-ish All About Love, where her skewed romanticism is given airy prominence.

After a couple of plays, those predominant first impressions of artistic inconsistency do dissipate, and it's easier to get lost in the mists of Ann's languid, dreamlike vision, although the more insistent inner details of the accompaniment do still prevent Ann's creativity from being reflected in all its glory; I still get the feeling there's more to Ann than her records are currently revealing.

David Kidman