demo
Annabel (Lee) & Richard E : Annabel (Lee) (UK,2007)****°
When I heard the first track, “(1848)”, arranged with a looped piano theme, jazzy double bass and perfect strings and flute touches, which sounded like a perfect unknown jazz track from between the 40s and 60s, I asked on the myspace website from which date this to me seemingly-“classic” track, came from. It seemed a new demo track. Here, Annabel Lee’s voice sounds incredibly beautiful, warm, and with a Billie Holliday-like quality. “Believe” shows more longing in her voice. The arrangements are similarly sparse as the previous track. Different from Holliday and the spirit of her age, where Billie was able to switch any feeling of disgrace and sadness into a balanced personality, our generation does not mind showing loneliness and sadness like it is. “My homeland”, with a bit of spoken word too shows an unrestrained longing with no sureness of confirmation, and also “acquiescence” with loops of strings, sea water breeze, sketches of trumpet, and bits of piano and vibes with spoken word. The last two tracks are covers, I guess, like “Moon and Sand”, a slightly sad but also comforting/consolation song accompanied by jazzy piano, and “Windmills (of your mind)” from Michelle LeGrand known from the movie “The Thomas Crown Affair”, which is accompanied by electric bass, percussion.
Annabel Lee borrowed her name from Edgard Allan Poe’s last poem (note:-which Marissa Nadler put onto music-). It is in a sense of darkness and ultimate death that all desires can be forgotten and find a peace, in a way that never can be lived during an active life. It is like a form of inner peace and inspiration, a muse of silence comparable to Satie’s breathing silence in his compositions, which was such a unique discovery, and which is here now personalized in the voice, a concept by the name of Annabel Lee. The dark nature of its origin might recall to us Patty Water’s “Sings”, but Annabel Lee(s interpretation adds a warm heart comfort to it, which is already able to cure the feeling of loss, by finding this particular form of peace in its dark core of expression.
Labels ? This is a golden/diamond tip !
