dot allison invites you to enter room 7½

New album features duets with Paul Weller and Pete Doherty

Dot Allison has been quietly prolific these past few years. With her long-awaited solo comeback Exaltation Of Larks still relatively fresh in the memory, news of a follow-up has come as nice surprise this morning as the Scottish singer prepares to self-release her fourth studio album, Room 7½, on September 7th. Having worked with Massive Attack, Death In Vegas, My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, and appeared on tribute albums to Scott Walker (at his personal request, no less) and Daniel Johnston, her career has always been dotted with connections, and in recent years she has often been mentioned in the same breath as Pete Doherty, collaborating and touring with the tabloid favourite and his band Babyshambles. In fact, Dot and Pete recorded an entire album of duets a while back, but the release got shelved.

One of those songs, ‘I Wanna Break Your Heart’, has nevertheless surfaced on Room 7½ and was recently described by the NME as a paean to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, while another Dot/Doherty cowrite ‘Portrait Of The Sun’ rounds out the tracklist. First single ‘Love’s Got Me Crazy’ (out September 14th) was co-written with Paul Weller, and features the Jam man on vocals. The 11-song album also includes Dot’s cover Scott Walker’s ‘Montague Terrace (In Blue)’ from his 1967 solo debut Scott. Room 7½ was co-produced by Dot and longtime PJ Harvey cohort Rob Ellis, with guest appearances from ex-Bad Seed Mick Harvey, Biffy Clyro’s James Johnston and Terry Edwards of The Scapegoats. It was mixed at Paul Weller’s Black Barn studio.

Following on from Dot’s contribution to the soundtrack of Channel 4 series ‘Henry VIII: The Mind Of A Tyrant’, she’s collaborated with composer Christian Henson (’Severance’, ‘Dirty Pretty Things’) score for upcoming horror flick “Triangle’, on general release from October.

 

Room 7½
01 Cry
02 Paved With A Little Pain
03 I Wanna Break Your Heart
04 Buzzing Round The Honey Pots
05 Room 7½
06 Fall To Me
07 Love’s Got Me Crazy
08 Montague Avenue (In Blue) 
09 Johnny Villain
10 While She Sleeps
11 Portrait Of The Sun 

Alan Pedder

Written by: Wears The Trousers magazine

Tags: alan pedder, dot allison, paul weller, pete doherty

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am and is filed under news, the inside leg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.