In the United States, French composer Yann Tiersen is best known for his Amélie score, but in France, he's a mainstream sensation who's dabbled in rock, punk, pop, and various works for stage and screen; a popular aesthete whose stark compositions are comparable to those of Erik Satie and Phillip Glass. In the United States, Shannon Wright is best known as the other P.J. Harvey, with a brace of Steve Albini-produced records to show for it, but in France, she's best known for collaborating with Yann Tiersen. If Amélie had been an angsty melodrama about the impossibility of connection rather than a bubbly farce that hinged on implausible connectivity, this collaboration would have served it well.
It doesn't seem as if either musician had to bend their aesthetic very far to make it fit. Wright doesn't log as much ragged guitar slashing as she normally does, but her emotionally overstated, depressive whisper/caterwaul is well-matched by the cinematic stateliness and tragic beauty of Tiersen's piano, violin, and accordion arrangements. Insofar as the two halves are extricable, Tiersen's contribution is more compelling. Wright's histrionic singing style and often-mawkish lyrics are an acquired taste, and they impose overly concrete topical borders on Tiersen's evocative, tacitly emotional instrumental tracks. As a result, a music that could have told a thousand stories ends up telling exactly one-- that of Wright's bitter romantic distress. If I'd never heard either artist, I'd be more likely to search out Tiersen's solo work than Wright's.
Wright's singing here is particularly reminiscent of P.J. Harvey's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, and if you're a fan of either artist, this record's cachet jumps up several notches. It opens with the rumbling, metronomic piano chords and gradually intensifying string accents of "No Mercy for She", a dark clockwork dirge trembling on the brink of atonality. "Dragonfly" features the wistful accordion that characterized Amélie and scattered echoic guitars. "Dried Sea" and "While You Sleep" are more rock-oriented, with the haunting arpeggios and studious dissonance of Wright's familiar guitar style weaving through Tiersen's sawing, tempestuous strings. There are some lovely classical piano phrases worked into "Ode to a Friend" and "Callous Sun", a nice contrast to the more cabaret-style pianos elsewhere. If Tiersen is providing the ballast for Wright's emotional catharsis, then this is the rare case where the ballast is more valuable than the cargo it accompanies.
