And three years later, Dot Allison returned with an album that finally lived up to some of the hype surrounding her flacid debut, Afterglow. Afterglow, you might recall, collapsed because Allison played by record exec rules; she was Dido, albeit with more than just a simper to call 'talent.' Fortunately, the largely successful We Are Science shows Allison as a far more secure vocalist and, more importantly, more confident of her experimental inclinations.
Allison was once one-third of One Dove, the Andrew Weatherall-produced band who were all set to out-bliss Primal Scream's Screamdelica. One Dove's only full-length, Morning Dove White, combined Balearic chill with Neil Young folkiness and arcing feedback. Toned down by the good MBA chaps at FFRR, the publicly released version of Morning Dove White was an emaciated shred of what One Dove and Weatherall originally handed over. Nice.
The hands-off heads at Mantra Recordings, however, as well as her collaborations with Death in Vegas ("Dirge," from The Contino Sessions) and Glaswegian pure-techno addicts Slam ("Visions," from Alien Radio) have bolstered Allison's self-assuredness. She's also shown more than just loyalty by asking the other half of Two Lone Swordsmen, Keith "Radioactive Man" Tenniswood, to mix, program and co-produce half of this album. And though former influence Weatherall is physically absent from duties here, his amalgam of electro and headspace dub is ubiquitous.
We Are Science begins with the crunchy electro of "We're Only Science" which sounds exactly as you'd imagine an Allison/Tenniswood collaboration. Tenniswood opens the front door and in lurches the greebo-ist of basslines-- one that lives alone in a trash-strewn trailer, who never changes his leather pants, has breath that peels paint, and the social skills of a snakehead fish. Allison's response is simply to repeat the title. But rather than the blank delivery of Miss Kitten or Adult.'s Nicola Kuperus, Allison's delivery has more of a Sheila Chandra inflection. The song's countermelody also supports the Chandra comparison, as it's remarkably close to the melody of Monsoon's "Ever So Lonely."
"Substance" scores by integrating electroclash elements (stabbing squiggles, chugging analog bass) with nu-breaks feistiness. The swirling Farfisa-ish organ line and straight-ahead rhythms of "You Can Be Replaced" connect the song with the druggier moments of Afterglow. Yet Allison's vocals are far less fey here-- she never goes so far as to attempt a Morissette level of ersatz earnestness. Rising from a slow burst of deep bass bubbles (a very Weatherall technique), "Performance" marks the lone appearance of one of IDM's forgotten masters, Beaumont Hannett. Using similar production techniques as the ones he employed for Lida Husik, Hannett surrounds Allison in a transcendental layer of strings and analogue confections. It's the brooding production that William Orbit has longed to master. Allison, of course, knows that nothing should distract from Hannant's production. She relegates her vocals to a few brief interludes during these stunning, celestial seven minutes.
Coming on a like a female-fronted Lo-Fidelity Allstars, "Strung Out" is the first of two tracks recorded with Mercury Rev's Dave Fridmann and Grasshopper. The song is classic radio-pop, albeit tempered by gruff distortion and enhanced with Tenniswood's silver box trickery. And "Lover," the closing track and second of the Fridmann/Grasshopper productions, is the best of the bunch. Though floating along on the stylistic tropes of country (slide guitar, languid drawling vocals), it reminds me more of the machine euphoria of Underworld's pinnacle moment, "Rez." The push/pull of these two styles affords the song a potency it would surely lack if either constituent were absent.
The only real misfire on Afterglow comes with "I Think I Love You," a song only the most damnably loyal Fischerspooner aficionado could love. Over a generic electroclash rhythm, Allison repeats the title with less conviction than the average hormonally imbalanced twelfth-grader recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps our Dot will say anything to secure a quickie in the bogs.
After the limp meandering of Afterglow, We Are Science is unquestionably a leap in the right direction. "Lover," "Substance," and "Performance," in particular, prove that the right co-producer at the controls can achieve spectacular feats. Yet for all this record's strengths, I'm not fully convinced it's the one to crown her career. All the elements are present, sure, but not always in the right place.
