Annie Gallup
Album: Little Five Points
Label: Waterbug
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.anniegallup.com

A month or two back I reviewed the most recent disc on which this charismatic lady collaborated with fellow singer-songwriter Peter Gallway in the guise of the duo Hat Check Girl, but I didn't then get down to considering Little Five Points which arrived for review at around the same time, since I wanted the dust to settle on my ecstatic review of Annie's previous album Weather, which I felt couldn't be bettered. Well that assessment still holds true, but I'd say, after having played its followup Little Five Points a good deal, that it's an equal in artistic terms to its predecessor.

It's described by Annie herself - with the typically pin-sharp perception of a true poet - as "conversations in a quiet room". To me, that means intimate and hushed, invigorating and stimulating all at the same time - which perfectly sums up the nature of the music and poetry within. Its special artistic vision is completely personal to Annie, for all that the ambient signature of her continuing musical partnership with Peter is stamped through its grooves by dint of his close involvement in the sessions (co-producing, mixing and a modicum of playing). The album's a typically stripped-down affair, on which Annie either sings or half-intones her poetry against a tremendously sparse backdrop of a lone guitar (or possibly two - she has quite a choice!). The sheer emotion Annie can conjure out of such minimal resources is astounding, whether adopting her own unique trademark sprechstimme delivery (on around half of the tracks) or, in song, going all out for pained bluesy expression (All My Old Lovers) or painful recollection (Careless Lover); some tracks, like Speed Of Light, tellingly combine both modes of delivery.

Annie's always had quite a gift, for being so naturally able to mesmerise her listeners and bring a curiously logical sensuality to word-collages of the most ostensibly mundane imagery (not exactly the telephone directory perhaps, but you get my drift I'm sure) - for instance, Poets, one of her archetypal, literal "screenplay-in-music" pieces (which supplies the disc's title phrase), is blessed with a busily organic score. Here, as ever, her guitar figures are supremely imaginative: rather aptly so on the opening track, a eulogy-cum-biographical-memorial to musician-innovator Les Paul, which manages to hold our interest despite its repetitive melodic content and lack of purely musical development. The mysterious, reflective The Story Of My Life (written after reading Virginia Woolf) considers the process of turning experience into art through the use of metaphor in songwriting, and this is achieved through a spellbinding combination of spoken and sung delivery (interestingly, the contours of the sung sections kinda reminded me of Banks Of The Ohio). The near-rap of Girl In The Ruins meditates almost casually on the concept of impermanence, and contrasts with the whispered confidences of Movies. Throughout, Annie's unshakable confidence, allied to her enviably precise delicacy of expression, ensures a compelling, rewarding - and remarkably beautiful - experience for the listener.

David Kidman