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Amy Allison comes into her own
BY BILL KISLIUK
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Amy Allison’s songwriting talent has deep roots: she’s the daughter of jazz pianist and singer Mose Allison, who’s widely recognized as a sort of Faulkner of the blues for his world-weary Southern sensibility and devastatingly witty tunes like "Young Man Blues" and "Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy." Amy, who hooked up with Lone Justice’s Ryan Hedgecock for two discs in the late ’90s as the duo Parlor James, has just released her third solo disc, No Frills Friend (Diesel Only). And she acknowledges that her father is "a huge influence." His lyrics, she explains over the phone from her home in New York, "are real philosophical and succinctly written, so precise and powerful. Everything that he does is pure him. It’s not like a decision. It’s more like he has to be true to himself." Her work shares those qualities: the songs on No Frills Friend are characterized by economy, humor, and a natural sense of melancholy that hangs like moss from a tree. In contrast to her father’s idiosyncratic piano jazz, her musical palette is built on a foundation of stripped-down rootsy pop. The disc features softly jangling guitars from Allison and producer David Scott, the Glasgow-born leader of the Pearlfishers. Pearlfishers drummer Jim Gash shuffles along gently, and the songs are fleshed out with subtle touches of synth or background vocal harmonies that bring a Brian Wilson–style pop sensibility to the proceedings. But Allison’s lyrics are the driving force; like her father, she has a knack for distilling complex emotions down to their melancholy essence. "I don’t feel there’s magic in the air," she sings on "Dreaming’s Killing Me," "and if there were, I probably wouldn’t care." Allison says she strives to filter out the details of the people and situations that spur the songs. "I never want it to sound personal or anything. I try more to detail the feeling, and I think that feelings are universal. I always like it when you say something sad in an upbeat way. I like things to have double meanings and to be a little bit vague." So do her fans. Elvis Costello cited her raw 1996 debut, Maudlin Years (Koch), as a favorite in a 2000 Vanity Fair article. And insurgent country singer Laura Cantrell, who also records for Brooklyn’s Diesel Only label, has made Allison’s "The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter" a highlight of her live sets. Indeed, though Allison’s straightforward, somewhat nasal delivery has its artless charms, it’s no match for the honeyed sound of Cantrell’s voice. Her songwriting is what stands out, and it’s not hard to imagine certain tracks on No Frills Friend as mainstream hits in the hands of other artists. The hook-heavy country stomper "Hell To Pay" would be a perfect fit for Nashville crossover queen Shania Twain; "Moonlight Becomes You," which she recorded as a duet with Scott, is an old-time piece of mountain music that could easily be an Alison Krauss staple. And though she’s been pegged as a great writer of sad songs, Allison doesn’t want to be seen as a woman of constant sorrow. "Staring at the sky is something that everybody does — it makes you feel small," she says in reference to "Beautiful Night," which begins, "It’s a beautiful night so I’ll try not to be sad." "I don’t look at that as sad," she adds. "It’s more like wistful and connected to the universe." No Frills Friend was recorded over the course of 11 leisurely days in Scotland, during two short breaks in a European tour, when she hooked up with David Scott at the Kilbride Arts Centre, and she admits that it came together more easily than her first two CDs. Yet she wasn’t particularly familiar with the Pearlfishers and hadn’t planned on doing an entire album with Scott. "It just flowed," she recalls. "We were in this room on the second floor with big windows that looked out to the lawn. It didn’t have that subterranean studio feel that’s so common." More important, she adds, "David just gets me, and he had great ideas."
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