Amy Annelle / The Places: C or D?

I'm surprised she's been mentioned so rarely on ilm. it seems like her background as a Portland singer-songwriter who once recorded with members of the Decemberists and Death Cab for Cutie has overshadowed the fact that her music is really, genuinely good. (for what it's worth, she's also performed with Jandek and Michael Hurley in recent years)

the first two Places albums (essentially solo albums under a group name) strike me as typical indie sadcore/slowcore stuff, although I haven't spent much time with them. but the third one, Songs for Creeps[i], has really grown on me. she shows a real knack there for pitting disparate textures against each other, with a solo acoustic number that turns into a driving fuzz-folk stomp with a piercing wah-wah synth line; a whispery, telephone-miked singing voice gradually buried in static and discordant keyboards, which are themselves cut short and replaced by the sound of birds chirping; and a sweet, fingerpicked folk ballad made sinister by the presence of echoey, multitracked harmonies and a Moog drone. the material is quite pretty and catchy and traditionalist, which makes the weird arrangements all the more beguiling.

[i]A School of Secret Dangers[i/] and last year's [i]The Cimarron Banks, both released under Amy's own name, are strong efforts as well. the former is mostly solo lo-fi recordings of her and an acoustic guitar, and the latter is kind of a midpoint between that one and Songs for Creeps. at times she tries too hard to come across as creepy and unhinged, and her few attempts at bluesy material are just plain hokey, but the albums I named are all pretty special and unjustly slept-upon, imho.

ah, bump

I probably should've included a youtube clip or two, but none of them are very exciting. she has four tracks from Songs for Creeps on her website, and they're all more or less highlights. (annoyingly, she has the same song on autoplay on every single page of her site, so you have to stop/pause it before you can listen to anything else)

http://shelobs.com/img/backside.gif