at a glance...

Hometown: Edinburgh/Glasgow, Scotland
First Recordings: 1993

Personnel:
Dot Allison -vocals, keyboards, programming, piano, Hammond, vocoder, guitar, tubular bells, mini squeeze box
Magnus Fiennes -keyboards, piano, Rhodes piano, Harmonium
Graham Kearns -guitar
Kevin Shields -guitar on "Message Personnel"
Gary "Mani" Mounfield -bass on "Colour Me"
Will Blanchard -drums on "Colour Me" and "Message Personnel"
Ged Lynch -drums, percussion on "Did I Imagine You?"
B.J. Cole -pedal steel on "Tomorrow Never Comes"
Gavin Woods -guitar on "Mo' Pop"
Henry Olsen -bass on "Mo' Pop"
Jim Hunt -sax on "Mo' Pop"
Duncan Mackay -trumpet on "Mo' Pop"
Simon Chamberlain -piano on "In Winter Still"
Ralph Salmins -drums on "In Winter Still"

Bands in the family :
One Dove, Death In Vegas, Primal Scream, Andrew Weatherall, Sabres of Paradise, Bacharach and David, My Bloody Valentine, The Stone Roses, Black Grape, The Verve

What a pleasant surprise. If Dot Allison's last band, One Dove, were underachievers par excellence, then Afterglow is the sound of one woman determined to give it her all. On her debut solo album Allison tackles a host of instruments and an even wider range of emotions, sometimes in the space of a single song (check the desperate/ecstatic mantra "Message Personnel"). But if Afterglow is ambitious, it's also focused, and Dot has come up with a set of almost weightless songs that play perfectly to her strengths.

Thankfully, she doesn't so much dodge the female chanteuse/trip-hop wallpaper clichés as laugh aloud at them. There are funky beats ("Colour Me," "Mo' Pop") and exotic techno touches ("Morning Sun"), but the vision is widescreen, and the tunes sound fuller and richer with every listen. There are chilling ambient passages, soulful lullabies, and a frankly stunning piano waltz called "In Winter Still." Through it all, you can hardly shake the feeling that you're discovering a classic LP.

Indeed, Afterglow could be the post-club Screamadelica that so many had hoped One Dove would make with Andrew Weatherall. Free of her bandmates and choosing her own collaborators - Death In Vegas, Kevin Shields, Arab Strap, Hal David, Mani of Roses/Scream infamy - Allison has built herself the kind of mini-epic most songwriters don't even start toying with until their fourth album. That she has done so without overextending her airy voice or pointedly personal lyrics only strengthens the notion that, artistically, Dot Allison is mature beyond her experience. Hopefully Afterglow will win the audience it deserves and turn out to be just the beginning.