Ann Scott - Flo

Dublin’s Ann Scott is yet another lady in the vein of Marissa Nadler, Sara June and Nina Nastasia - a singer songwriter stretching the world of folk a bit further. Like Nadler, June and Nastasia, her main tools are her brooding, almost fragile voice and fingerpicked guitar. She buttresses them with the sparing use of piano, samples and the occasional use of strings, but for even with additional musicians, her music has a spare and spectral quality. ‘Flo’ - her third album - kicks off with ‘Love Is In Him’which also enjoys the vocal presence of fellow Irish songstress Gemma Hayes and a doleful cello courtesy of Dublin experimental musician Kim Porcelli. ‘Killerman’ with its plunky banjo, insistently strummed guitar, and dangerously charming protagonist could be one of P.J. Harvey’s quieter songs. ‘Return Die’ uses some plonking drum samples (not really the album’s finest moment) and some stately guitar to escort its morose theme to its conclusion. The jauntier ‘Universe’, with its piano intro and more organic drums comes across like a Tears for Fears song stripped of its excess musical baggage. The drifting ‘Loss’ makes good use of what sounds like a thumb piano or music box, with metallic droplets of noise standing in for dripping water. The album isn’t all folk-strum: ‘Candy’, with its electronic noises, swaying bass and thumping drum sounds heavily inspired by Bjork. Scott’s album should enchant anyone who enjoys the work of Nastasia, Nadler, and other female artists willing to step outside folk’s more traditional norms.

Track Listing:-

1 Love Is In Him
2 Killerman
3 Return to Die
4 Universe
5 Lost
6 Always
7 Candy
8 Under the Sun
9 Sally
10 Untrue
11 Hangman
12 All Eternity
13 Return to Life
14 Flo