Dana Immanuel is the victim and perpetrator of her own rollercoaster. She’s the sad demise and the psychoanalyzed runaway, a mix of contradictions that somehow work in cohesion, at least for the sake of making a record. That’s the pretext for her sophomore album ‘Dotted Lines’ (due October 23), the follow-up to the emphatic ‘Character Assassination’, a record steeped in folk, blues, jazz and Americana that does exactly what it says on the tin and more. With ‘Dotted Lines’ Dana delves further into psychoanalysis, both on herself and on others, exploring life and how it works through hard-hitting poetry that truly stands alone as written work in addition to its role within song.
The music, however, is hardly a supporting act, as she redefines folk music with a strong thread of psychedelia and a penchant for weirdness. Such a notion comes alive in the distinctive title track and opening number, a song that manages to successfully incorporate electronic and acoustic elements for a truly fascinating mix. One of the most boundary-pushing tracks on offer, it is a perfectly odd match for the lyrical content, which muses on someone who has built up a fake version of themselves in order to keep to society’s rules and guidelines. “I feel you struggling to stay inside the dotted lines, when the real you wants to know how far your axle’s got to grind… when the real you wants to go outside the shaded area sometimes,” she sings. It comes off as something of a kiss-off, an intense criticism, something she relishes on the far gentler and more conventional country ballad ‘Life In Colour’. “Baby you’re not bohemian, and this isn’t arthouse, this is real life, and you can’t be the heroine, you’re just not that bright, and I can’t shake the feeling there’s more to this than dark and light, yeah I’m in colour and you’re in black and white.”
If you expected Dana to pull any of her punches, you’ll be sadly mistaken. The stark metaphors of simple folk closer ‘Be Like Arnie’ see her striving to become as cold and robot-like as the corporates who run the world, while ‘Going To The Bottle’ highlights the inescapable cycle of entrapment and doom, and bluegrass jam ‘Devil’s Money’ laughs hollowly at the corruption of the gambling industry. Much of ‘Dotted Lines’ draws inspiration from such a world as Dana worked in poker for some time during the formation of this record, deep in the high-stakes world of Monte Carlo. The incredible highs and lows she watched play out during that time come to dance with her own emotions and experiences, as ‘Mile High’ explores being elevated to a desirable position and yet seeing the reality of the world, thereby sucking the soul out of her existence. ‘Rock Bottom’ meanwhile, embraces depression and feeling lost in a far more assertive manner, poignant revelations tumbling out of her mouth as digressions around the core centrepiece, “You never hit rock bottom, there’s always more to sink, and the long run is farther than you think.” And the psychedelic folk of ‘Wild Things’ finds her advising someone caught in suffering to get out and burn the whole thing down – perhaps advice as much to the subjects of her songs as to herself.
Often with scores based on the banjo (Dana’s main instrument), ‘Dotted Lines’ features a texture fed by her five-piece, all-female Stolen Band, the same group that has helped Dana make a name for herself across the basement bars of Europe. A hard-living fighter from North London who drinks a lot of bourbon and was classically trained at Oxford University, her tensions and highly-strung emotions come out beautifully on ‘Dotted Lines’, in a way that is complicated, conflicted, weird and yet wonderfully perfect. It is a powerful record, a vulnerable record, and a fun one, that redefines the boundaries of Americana in 2015.
Originally posted here.
