Shannon Wright
Dyed In The Wool

Shannon the passionate. Shannon the visionary. Compared by some to Lisa Germano, in my opinion, she shares with the Indiana singer-songwriter, besides the inclination to play almost all instruments on her records, solely the folk matrix of her compositions. The mood that permeates Shannon's works (particularly the one reviewed here) is undoubtedly more dark and funereal (sometimes even a bit forced), and while Lisa expresses her suffering in a straightforward and immediate manner, Shannon uses a code all her own that is more often than not almost impenetrable. Her voice, anything but fragile, often rises in piercing cries of pure pain.

This journey into the author's domestic hell begins with the restless Less Than A Moment, almost a waking nightmare, in which Shannon has the vigor of the riot girls (PJ Harvey comes to mind), with the difference that her anger is all in the mind, further suggested by often classical melodies (A Vessel For A Minor Malady) as well as cryptic and brief lyrics, almost aphorisms, at times unintelligible. The darker and more concise moments (like the magnificent and terrible Hinterland, on hysterical piano figures) are also the most successful; The Sable and the instrumental Colossal Hours mercilessly revel in the peals of the piano and sinister incursions of noises of all kinds, until they plunge into the darkness of total despair.
The psychological quality of her songs is evident in tracks like Surly Demise and The Hem Around Us, not vital at all, suspended in a limbo of reflective ecstasy. Perhaps even darker is You Hurry Wonder, and the "la la la" accompanying its final notes is simply distressing.
The longest Dyed In The Wool, equally tormented ("there goes your body in a box/ that is all I have left/ now this odor lines my shaking bed") seems to reflect a landscape of almost inhuman desolation. The masterpiece is perhaps Methods Of Sleeping, whispered like a prayer over a faint carpet of organs and keyboards, until what counterpoints her sweet singing ("what was is failing in your eyes") is only a delicate arpeggio of the harmonium. The magical ending of Bells, soft and gentle like Lisa Germano's most serene lullabies, seems to suggest that perhaps, after all, there is a bit of hope, a way out.

If the album has a flaw (but for many, it can be a virtue), it is perhaps the excessive conciseness (just 34 minutes). The fact that many of the songs don't develop in the usual 3-4 minutes makes them, on one hand, feel like punches in the stomach from an unknown source, but on the other hand, it elevates them to sudden revelations, at the end of which one ends up lamenting their brutal beauty.