Heart-Shaped Scars

After taking a decade-long break from recording music, Dot Allison returns with the most intimate and sincere-sounding album shes made yet. Heart-Shaped Scars is almost painfully delicate folk music, recorded in a way that suggests it was all done with young kids sleeping in the next room. This is not the shiny pop chanteuse of her 1999 album Afterglow, nor is it the icy electroclash singer heard on We Are Science or the mysterious noir balladeer of Room 7 1/2. The feel of this record comes closest to that of the baroque, almost chamber folk of Exaltation of Larks, but the sounds here are more fragile and close to the bone emotionally. Allison and her collaborators -- who include co-producer Fiona Cruickshank and arranger Hannah Peel -- concoct a magical realm of whispered vocals, angel-soft harmonies, subtle strings, gently struck piano keys, quietly strummed guitars and ukuleles, and then pair them with words that dont just hint at heartbreak but rather spread it on thick like a layer of mercurochrome over a recent wound. Listening to the album is like eavesdropping on a group of people making music for themselves, purging the deepest feelings for no other reason than its the right thing to do. In that regard, Heart-Shaped Scars has much in common with the obscure private-press singer/songwriters of the early 70s who sounded slightly out of place and time, yet plugged into the cosmic continuum all the same. Its easy to get carried away with these kinds of thoughts as the album plays and one is transported ever so carefully out of wherever they might be at the time and into Allisons haunted house of sound and emotion. The quieter tracks like The Haunted and Forevers Not Much Time take you there on a cloud of sadness as Allisons vocals guide the way. Slightly more arranged and dramatic songs such as Constellations and Cue the Tears come complete with drums and the aching quality of a lost Sandy Denny classics. One Love even has the kind of soaring chorus that the best One Dove songs had. They are no less tender though; in fact, the shatteringly gloomy Constellations sports the most unvarnished vocal performance of the album as Allison can barely get the words out. Only the help of the strings and harmonies get her -- and the listener -- through the emotional land mine. Most of the record travels a similar path and its as lovely as it is sad. In the past, Allison has felt like something of a musical chameleon searching for a sound that she truly felt invested in and could take full ownership of. With Heart-Shaped Scars, shes found a home in sparse and spooky folk. Possibly not something one could have predicted when she first arrived on the scene with One Dove, but something that is satisfying and true all the same. ~ Tim Sendra