Shakenstir » Dot Allison’s New Record

Dot Allison’s New Record

DOT ALLISON NEW ALBUM - HEART-SHAPED SCARS released on July 30th on SA Recordings

Available digitally and as a double gatefold vinyl (Limited edition pressing of 500)

https://sarecordings.com/format/724541-heart-shaped-scars

New Single - ‘Long Exposure’ - out today: https://orcd.co/dotallisonlongexposure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxtZuDUMN8

In 1999 I received an album by Dot Allison called AFTERGLOW. I loved it and before too long interviewed Dot and witnessed her brilliant live performance in Leeds. After time out to raise a family, Dot Allison is returning with HEART-SHAPED SCARS, her most realised and illuminating album to-date, available from July 30th.

Lead single ‘Long Exposure’, out now, is indicative of the album’s fragile beauty and is, says Allison, “One of the first songs I wrote on ukulele. Last March I picked up the instrument and started composing, the fact I don’t play the ukulele was very freeing and I had to compose purely by ear, constructing my own chord clusters.”

Framed by a backdrop of sparse dream-folk, HEART-SHAPED SCARS is Allison’s more personal record to date. It gathers many threads of Allison’s interests - music, literature, science and nature. “I wanted it to be comforting like a familiar in-utero heartbeat, a pure kind of album that musically imbues a return to nature,” she explains.

The album is produced by Allison alongside Fiona Cruickshank, with Hannah Peel adding string arrangements to four songs, courtesy of a quintet of Scottish folk musicians. Recorded at Castlesound Studios in Edinburgh - Dot’s home town - the sessions include new collaborations with singer songwriters Amy Bowman ‘The Haunted’ and Zoë Bestel, ‘Can You Hear Nature Sing?’.

Field recordings of birdsong, rivers and the ambience of The Hebrides - where Dot has a cottage - also played their part. A location for gatherings amongst folk musician pals (Sarah Campbell and Amy Bowman included), “sharing ideas and passing instruments between us all, amongst friends and the island community,” says Allison. “It’s where I first sang ‘Long Exposure’ in public at a folk house-concert. So, I can definitely hear some of the Hebrides in ‘Heart-Shaped Scars‘.

Allison also hears elements of The Wicker Man film soundtrack (she once sung ‘Gently Johnny’ at Glastonbury) and the influence of folk-minded artists in her record collection, such as Linda Perhacs, Karen Dalton, Gene Clark, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Nick Drake, Opal, Mazzy Star, Brian Wilson and, most poignantly, the late Andy Weatherall. “Andy championed, signed and mentored me,” she says. “He gave me so many compilations that broadened my musical tastes… I hear his influence throughout all of my albums.”

HEART-SHAPED SCARS may have the richness and metaphorical depth of poetry but it’s balanced out by classic tropes of singer-songwriters through the ages. The sentiments behind ‘Cue The Tears’, ‘Love Died In Our Arms’ and ‘Goodbye’ are direct appeals from the heart; melodically too, they chime with torch-singing and soul traditions. Allison’s father was a botanist, and her mother a musician; eventually, the DNA of music took this former bio-chemistry student in a very different direction - and with good reason too. “To me, music is a sort of tonic or an antidote to a kind of longing, for a while at least,” she concludes.

HEART-SHAPED SCARS has that very same impact: an antidote to stress, a beautiful, restorative and inspiring balm for these times.

Since 1999’s AFTERGLOW, Allison has striven to “keep the listener on a journey - and myself too.” That journey has taken her from AFTERGLOW’S broad church (trip-hop, Tim Buckley-esque ballads, chilled psychedelia) to the sultry synth-pop of WE ARE SCIENCE (2002), the baroque EXALTATION OF LARKS (2007) and the roots drama of ROOM 7½ (2009). She’s worked with an extraordinary roll call of talent - Kevin Shields, Hal David, Paul Weller, Pete Doherty and Darren Emerson, Massive Attack, Scott Walker, Slam, Philip Shepard, The Babyshambles and Pete Doherty, underlining the huge respect her peers hold her in.

On HEART-SHAPED SCARS Allison mines a deeply emotive seam. “Love, loss and a universal longing for union that seems to go with the human condition. To me, music is a sort of tonic or an antidote to a kind of longing, for a while at least.”