Fallows: Soundness
oscarson

Admirers of enchantress Anne Garner won't want to miss this half-hour EP outing with guitarist Jeff Stonehouse under the Fallows name. Issued on the German imprint oscarson, Soundness is strikingly presented in a twelve-inch vinyl pressing accompanied by a handmade six-page booklet featuring images by Sue Williams A'Court and calligraphy by Garner. Apart from three originals by her and the guitarist, the release includes a cover of “Sycamore Trees,” the wrenching torch song by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch that the late Jimmy Scott famously sang in a Twin Peaks episode.

The opening “Moon In Another Sky” wouldn't have sounded out of place on Garner's 2018 album Lost Play, given the material's glacial unfurl and her languorous, ever-so-delicate vocal delivery. With her voice accompanied by little more than guitar textures, the song's as stripped-down as it could be on instrumental grounds, yet the vaporous, reverb-drenched sound design lends the song a fullness that would be absent from a less elaborate production; with the material advancing in slow motion, a time-suspending character is also generated that amplifies the music's dream-like quality. Murkier by comparison is “Unspoken Love,” which in its dark shadings puts distance between Soundness and Garner's solo output; adding to that difference are jagged guitar shards by Stonehouse, even if undulating vocal emissions draw a clear connecting line from the EP to Lost Play and others in her discography. The Badalamenti-Lynch cover plunges the set even farther into darkness, with Garner's voice and flute the sole elements preventing the music from vanishing altogether into the depths. The downward trajectory continues with the eleven-minute title track, which sees the duo drifting through a tremolo-laden landscape smothered in hiss and cryptic atmospherics. Again the funereal tone is alleviated by the bright sonorities of the flute and the gentle murmur of the voice, but the music nonetheless exerts a strong seductive pull into the shadows.

December 2019