#ann scott

[nemoanimus]

Je ne crois qu’au coup de foudre, je refuse de faire la même chose qu’un tas de gens que je connais : essayer quelqu’un.

Ann Scott

[lesmotsquejauraisaimeecrire]

L'expérience collective du film en salle décline au point que bientôt il n' aura peut-être plus que des séries. [...] Je ne trouve pas ça naturel. Les séries d'avant l'étaient, quand il fallait attendre la semaine suivante pour l'épisode d'après, une fois que c'était fini, on pouvait passer à autre chose. Alors que maintenant avec le streaming et les coffrets, on ne s'arrête plus. C'est comme les chips, le goût du sel qui appelle le goût du sel et on finit le paquet. [...] Pas au sens où les personnages [des séries] m'avaient touchés au point qu'ensuite je me sente seul sans eux, mais après avoir été habitué à les voir autant, j'ai ressenti un vide très désagréable. Ce qui me fait penser que les séries nous prennent quelques chose, contrairement au cinéma qui nous donne. Avant les films étaient des rencontres, des cadeaux.

“Cortex”, Ann Scott, Stock, 2017, pp. 191-192

[juniro]

Ann Scott’s Superstars

[lolochaponnay]

[les-toupies-h]

Ann Scott

[abstractanalogue]

Ann Scott interview

I first came across Ann Scott’s music in 2018 and wrote about her Venus To The Sky (2013) album at that time here. She is a singer-songwriter but in the main she collaborates with what sounds like a full band at times so her sound can be vast when needed. Since then I have really gotten into what she has been doing and collected her other albums and none of them disappointed me in any way. I guess her main strength is the quality of the songs and she has a knack for finding the most suitable instrumentation and collaborators to really make them take-off. For me she is of the same calibre of an artist such as PJ Harvey and I wish she was as well known but such is the nature of life. Sometimes these things take time but her music is built to last. 

I have been posting about her regularly on the AA FB page and decided to make contact with her for an interview to tie-in with her outstanding new album Lily. I have many favourites from it but here I’ve selected ‘River’ and ‘One Step Fall’ as good examples to show the two sides of the album, from a full to a more sparse and minimal sound. For me, there were a few songs I instantly connected with but the whole album is a grower and worth the effort. While it hasn’t been such a long wait for me, older fans haven’t seen a new album in about eight years so I thought she’d have something interesting to say. It’s great to hear something of how the album came together and about her background, reactions to the pandemic and more. You can sample and purchase Lily on Bandcamp here.

How did you first get involved with music, were you always interested in singing and writing since you were very young? What were your early passions and influences (not just musical)?

Early on I just lived and breathed books. As a child, I remember the radio being on 24/7. I thought music was just an awful racket and associated it with detergent jingles and ranting talk show guests. I think I longed for silence really. That all changed in a positive way, in first class when our teacher encouraged us to dance on the tables along to Peter and the Wolf. Then came Top of the Pops as a weekly religion. In the eighties music had massive relevance, everybody was madly taping songs off the radio. There was a small selection of vinyl at our house and I spent many hours with a pound shop microphone stuck into the stereo – or was it the back of the VHS player ?- and even back then the big red button meant ‘record’. So, there were hours of fun overdubbing sci-fi movies and blasting along to Madonna long before the first 4 track arrived.

What was it like for you in those early days, what are your memories of starting out playing live etc? Did you get some recognition?

I first began busking around in the nineties and it was around about then I started writing songs, but I took a long time to finish and perform them. Initially I was just enthralled with that very primal thing of live singing. In Dublin the International Bar on Wicklow Street was the hub for songwriter talent, experienced and novice. There was a massive amount of it around and it was a magic time. Every Tuesday evening the upstairs venue there would be heaving with the motley crew of Dave Murphy’s songwriter guests. Dave curated an open mic ‘but with no mic’ kind of an evening and mentored, more or less, the whole singer songwriter scene at that time, which today accounts for many of Ireland’s household names. There was some A&R interest around but I didn’t have much of a knack for the schmooze and all that, I think I realized I was still developing a craft and probably wasn’t ready for committing to anything, whereas the industry was and is still obsessed with ‘new’ and ‘young’.

Even from your first album, in my opinion, you had very much developed a signature sound and voice. I guess this could just be you being yourself or is it something you really had to work on? Are you very self-critical, how easy is song writing for you? Going purely by your album covers, it appears you take on a different image/persona for each album. If I’m correct, is this part of your process for song writing as well?

You’re kind of born with the voice you have. All of your ideas and inspiration have to be influenced by the world around you. In my case, love of language slowly gave over to love of melody and expression of ideas but it was hard to marry the two. I am critical as hell and tend to do things slowly and mull over them and revise lots of times. Many songs are image heavy or take on personas, as you say, and I would throw in lots of characters and animals, maybe as metaphors for things, or sometimes not. I’ve always had a soft spot for odd tunings and gypsy sounding stringed instruments and gravitating to keys like C sharp or F sharp has not made me popular with fellow players. But in terms of a sound, in particular, the first few albums, my ideas were very much interpreted and realized by Karl Odlum.

Even though you are known as a solo artist there is a collaborative process for you to go through to get your music completed. Do you have regular people you work with or do they change with each project? How do you select your collaborators?

I’m happy to goof off on my own for a stint and write and record and layer music but you can’t beat that buzz of the idea exchange. Karl Odlum has a fantastic adaptable approach that he brings to everyone he works with, so I’ve been lucky to be able to tap into his expertise...and synth collection. He is a brilliant bass player, and a powerhouse of production ideas, and although I go at the Protools myself these days, Karl is still the linchpin I’d say. In terms of band, when budget allows the more the merrier. Touring with musicians you get to know people and give each other a dig out so I’m happy to barter with other songwriters when it comes to lending each other random ideas or vocals.

I felt things were really beginning to change for new artists around the very late 90s. The beginnings of MySpace and later YouTube and all of the promise (potential worldwide exposure!) that seemed to bring. As far as sales went, there was a kind of vacuum I felt from then until iTunes and digital sales became more firmly established with platforms like Bandcamp. Some of the traditional music print media also began to disappear or become unrecognisable from what it had once been. But live gigs and festivals became more popular (and good for selling music directly or so the theory goes). What was your experience as an artist that emerged right in those uncertain times of change?

Music has been a victim of its own success really. The technology which emancipated musicians (home studios, digital distribution etc) also kind of devoured them. There was suddenly a flood of independents all vying for the same shrinking media pie, and then the ‘subscribe a little and stream absolutely everything’ model (eg Spotify) came along and just about killed off album sales entirely. Back in the nineties an independent musician could be making a humble living and tour based on selling CDs at gigs, but that is all complicated now with the new medium. Additionally, many of the traditional opportunities such as the festival slots you mention are offered as unpaid promotional opportunities to up and coming artists. But if that is more and more the actual model, then you have to ask, what exactly is there to be up and coming to ?

You started a Patreon in the last year or so, what was your experience of that? I get the impression this helped the album along.

Patreon is the brand new world. It got me back into a discipline of finishing and releasing music, which for somebody who likes to spend months or years on single line lyrics, is a necessary thing. Also, it got me just back to connecting with people, and I was surprised by what subscription tiers worked or what people wanted to hear that I would not necessarily have thought of. Without listeners it is hard to make the music come alive. And that rabbit hole gets deeper. So, after a long gap between albums it was a great way to put the heartbeat back into things.

What can we expect from the new album, Lily, and what format will it take? Could you collaborate with different musicians this time around? What are your hopes for gigs, promotion etc. I suppose inevitably your new album (just like any album released this year) will be seen as a lockdown album, do you think the pandemic influenced your music or would it have still been more or less the same?

Lily is a digital only release, although I had a yearn for a vinyl pressing, I thought green is clean. The pandemic greatly paved the song selection, in that I couldn’t collaborate with other musicians last year even if I wanted to, so there is a lot of minimalism. There’s barely a click track anywhere on the album with many of the songs performed more or less as live takes. There are also fuller tunes with more featured artists which predated lockdown but overall, the lonely live intimate vibe is the prevailing wind. With everybody cooped up inside, it might sound counterintuitive, but it felt like the right time to release a live sounding record. When it does come to going back out to gig, I should have a selection that I can hopefully reproduce easily enough in a live context.

Due to the pandemic we are potentially in a very precarious time for music as we have known it. I know there is no crystal ball but how do you think things are going to work out for musicians and the industry itself?

Very odd times indeed, but the music industry is kind of eating itself anyway. In terms of gender and diversity balance, I hope that is one thing which can be addressed. I think the really obnoxious televised talent competitions have to go (or are they gone already?). Music had a very cringey tv moment for a while there. The keyword for the future music industry has to be - like all world industries at the moment - sustainability.

I read on your website that you moved to the countryside. What has your experience been?  

Moving to the countryside has been a major change for me and, also becoming a parent, so lots of things all fell into place and out of place, and lots of songs always fall out of change. I might miss being by the sea sometimes, but trade off in the deep countryside is the sky. All those thousands of super bright stars at night and those 360 degree sunsets. Plenty to space off to there...

Thanks for your time. You will find Ann’s website here and she is also on Facebook and Twitter.

[abstractanalogue]

Ann Scott - Venus To The Sky (Mystery Find #4)

I found this CD, Ann Scott’s Venus To The Sky, in the NCBI charity shop on Harmony Hill in Sligo town. I loved the artwork and I luckily remembered the artist’s name from 101 Irish Records You Must Hear Before You Die by Tony Clayton-Lea. While that was recommending her second album, We’re Smiling (2006), the one I found was her fourth and most recent album which dates from 2013 on her own Raghouse Records. Its quickly become one of my favourite recent albums and I hope that in time this post will help a few more people discover it too. 

When I first played it, if I am honest, I wasn’t really expecting more than just another pleasant Irish singer songwriter but the opening track, ‘Hoola’, quite simply blew me away with a loose, raw and fully rocking band that provides a perfect showcase for what Scott can do with her amazing voice when married to a driving riff. Nothing else here quite reaches the same heights but the album is all the more perfect for exploring other forms and leaving you wanting more. The album was recorded and mixed by Karl Odlum and everything just sounds and sits so well, for the songs and for the overall mood of the album, a brilliant job. While the album was recorded in a number of locations, including Dublin and Chicago, there is a real sense of cohesion throughout.

The next track, ‘You To Me’, sets more of the template to which the album follows but also has its own unique moments where everything just takes off. ‘Unite’ slows things down a bit and boasts a haunting tune that will certainly stay with you. ‘Strips’ has breathy intimate night-time vocals that take you on a journey to a place somewhere between waking and sleep (’Insomnia is never far’). ‘Joy’ is another real standout song I ended up playing over and over (you can play the video above). This song in particular and the whole album should have been huge for her, amazing stuff. Her strength really is in her songwriting and voice.

‘Coming Up’ slinks around being confessional and has, like many tracks here, become so familiar to me, I can see this album becoming one of those that triggers memories of when I first heard it. ‘For The First Time’ continues the bare desolate tempo and makes a lovely mid point dip in the album’s energy. ‘Solemn’ did remind me a bit of Cat Power’s vocal style and ‘All About Love’’s driving beat initially sounded like something PJ Harvey might have done but I don’t think this detracts at all from the album. The songs are so strong and these type of similarities are bound to crop up accidentally. These are two musicians Scott probably enjoys, as do I, very few artists come from nowhere. The closing song, ‘Stars’, is wonderfully downbeat, with faltering Dirty Three style drumming, the perfect end to a pretty much perfect album for me. 

I don’t really know how this album was received by the public at the time, Scott has certainly received critical acclaim in the past. As I’ve lost touch with contemporary music for various reasons (I’m usually about 10 years behind the times) I inevitably miss important artists like this but this album has lasted and will last for a long time to come. 

Ann Scott is still playing live and hopefully will have new music out soon. You can find her latest news on her Facebook page and stream and purchase her music on Bandcamp.

Stephen Rennicks