AMY ANNELLE: press

Swingset Magazine
by Howard Wyman

As Amy Annelle and her band the Places are projected through the ether that hangs like fog upon this vast and varied land, the tufts stirred in their wake settles into a sound at once warm, solid, and haunting—strong, relaxed, and yet vaguely scorned, like the chest-borne comet's tail of warmth behind a hearty swallow of straight bourbon whiskey. Portland, Brooklyn and Austin have all been home to the songstress at one time or another, among myriad other, far more remote locales, just as the Places are a rotating cast of talented musicians on hand to support Annelle's genius with their own. 2001 saw the release of The Autopilot Knows You Best, an unyielding and comparatively upbeat debut for the Places, followed by A School of Secret Dangers, a solo acoustic set of passionate yet eerie, dust-blown Annelle originals. Tales of ghosts, mangy dogs and loves found and lost have unfolded as Annelle's songwriting chops have burgeoned towards the striking and emergent quality found on the Places' latest offering, Call It Sleep, a staggering achievement of tranquil, curiously soothing acrimony. The songs seem exuded from a heart evolved well past a certain peril but still beating virulently, cozied up to the kind of restless resignation only expressed through lush patient melodies and expertly balanced arrangements. Swingset decided there's no time like the present to pick Amy's brain on the details.

S: Are there any permanent members of the Places besides you?
AA: A name of its own gives it more room to be itself. I use my own name when it's only me.

S: So 'Amy Annelle' equals you solo, 'the Places' equals Amy plus players?
Yes, this is how it's gone so far. The fist steady lineup came together one person at a time, starting with Ryan Stowe when he learned a few songs and came and played with me on the radio. Me and Ryan lived in a big old house and Michael Schorr lived there too, so we used to jam sometimes in the basement, and he recorded drums on a few of the first songs. There was a bad orange cat there named Bert who used to pee on Mike's drums, which is about the worst thing you could do. That house was cool; sometimes you'd get home in the middle of the night and raccoons would be in the kitchen…the most recent tour (with the Decemberists) I had limitations on how big a band I could bring, so we did something new; just Jude Webre and I, heretofore known as the 'Gruesome Twosome', or the 'Small Places'. Jude plays electric bass but is also a whiz on the lap steel and upright bass, and does classical bowing, too. We leaned more on folky stuff and some wierder stuff and did a cover of 'Blue Jay Way' with upright bass and detuned guitar.

S: Is there much collaborative songwriting?
AA: Nope, I'm the sole songwriter for The Places. I have been in that kind of collaborative situation with other projects, but for this I have always brought a complete song to people, words, structure, changes. On Call It Sleep I came up with arrangements and made sort of a map for recording and asked people to come in and lay the details stuff down. A lot of it was improvised or spontaneous, which I really like.

S: Tell me the story behind the song 'Broke Down' (from A School of Secret Dangers')
AA: Sure. It was after a show a while back, me and this man who I was sweet on went for a drive way up into the hills behind Portland, where it's pretty deserted. It was stormy and cold and we were looking for a view up there, but couldn't really see anything. We pulled over by what we thought was a park and left the van running with the heat on. We were walking around and looking at the lights through the fog and laughing and being generally crushed out when we realized, woah, wait, it wasn't a park. It was a graveyard. So being the callous young lovers we were, we made a few morbid jokes at the expense of the dead, kissed on each other a while but it was so miserable out and creepy now that we knew we were in a graveyard, we headed back to the van. And just as soon as we sat down in the van and shut the doors, the engine went totally dead! I had just tuned it up the day before, and now it wouldn't even turn over or make a sound, and we couldn't figure out why! So we started walking down this deserted road in the freezing cold and the rain, trying to hitch a ride back down to town, to get his truck to try and jumpstart the van. But nobody would stop for us! Finally this tweaky girl in a Suzuki Samurai picked us up and was going like 80 miles an hour down this twisty, wet road, we got his truck and when we drove it back up to the van and hooked the jumper cables up, his truck went dead. By then we were really freaked out and it was like 4 o'clock in the morning and he messed around under the hood for a while and managed to start the truck, but his radio wouldn't work! B y this time we were like, fuck it, it's cool, let's just get out of here! The next morning my friend drove me up to the dead van to meet a tow truck, and as we pulled up she said, "Oh my god, woah, I just got the weirdest feeling—there' s something up here, and it's not happy". That's when we got out, looked around in the daylight and saw to our horror that the young man and I had been fooling around in a children's graveyard. I just sat there crying and trying to apologize to the ghosts, who obviously didn't think our jokes were funny.

SS: There's something serious/heavy to Call It Sleep…
AA: Yes indeed. It was the aftermath of a love relationship that was bad, bad news. The album is not about "him," except 'Til the Death'. It got intense really fast but then got worse and worse, and while I was trying at all costs to save it, whole parts of me were getting cut off so slowly that I couldn't see it happening. So by the time it was over I had not only lost him, but I had lost myself in the process. By the time these songs were written and recorded, it was many months later. The emotional or love aspect of the relationship had already kind of resolved itself and I had moved on, but the other ways that It had affected my life had not resolved themselves. There was a lot of shrapnel damage. It affected the way I saw things and people around me; it felt like I had x-ray vision, but also that I was totally transparent. So these songs were partly a reminder to myself that I was still in there, especially 'Ruined New Life', even though I felt like I had been evicted, and was just walking around like a shell or a ghost…it's a lot angrier than anything else I've done, though the angering is more the simmering type than explosive. There are 'fuck you's', like 'What I Wouldn't Do For You'.

SS: What would you like to try next?
AA: OxyContin. Just kidding. I'd like to try and publish more of my writing; there's a lot of it stacking up. Same with photography. I would like to learn more about printing photos, I only know the basics. I want to learn how to make quilts! Also—I want to try and make one of those skirts you make from a big pair of man pants.

SS: Given unlimited time and resources, what form might Amy's "Magnum Opus" currently take?
AA: I would like to record sometime with a producer, to see in what direction an outside party would take my songs. Especially a personal hero! Like Jimmy Page! Or Joe Boyd! Or somebody I love for totally different reasons, like Gerry Rafferty, who wrote 'Right Down the Line' and 'Baker Street', the two best lite rock songs ever! I wonder what would happen, his arrangements are insane. Or Jeff Lynn! I am a big fan of ELO, especially the album Out of the Blue. It would be fun to hand the arranging over to someone with that kind of over-the-top sensibility, where perfect tiny details are happening all over the place. But for now I'm thinking of doing a loose and creepy kind of record here in Austin. I have a bunch of songs hanging around that would work good that way.

Copper Press isuse 13
by Jedd Beaudoin

"Nuclear bombs destroying cities in my head in my sleep, being stuck in a cave, watching people burn up", says Amy Annelle leader of the Places, recalling how apocalyptic images and her first real musical experiences meshed. "There was a radio station in Chicago called WBMX that had live DJ mixing house music at night and I would make mix tapes of that. I knew all the words to "Jam on It" and would sing it on the bus." That may be a far cry from the music she's made on albums such as Call It Sleep, but what came next isn't all that hard to believe.

Somewhere around that summer of fear a new girl moved into Annelle's neighborhood. The girl didn't have much of a record collection but her older brother did, which was how the pair first heard Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Smiths and plenty of other British Rock. Those two sources, along with punk rock sounds emanating from the towers of WNUR and WZRD, Annelle recalls were part of her "falling in love with music time," a time, she's quick to add, that still isn't over. "I keep finding new music all the time. I love it when people turn me on to good shit. There's no worry," she continued, "that I will ever hear it all."

What we don't talk about in our interview is the likelihood that somewhere in the Midwest or on one of the Coasts, there's an adolescent girl tucked tightly in her bed, dreaming of duck-taped windows, car bomb s and poisoned food supplies and maybe that girl is hearing one of Annelle's records for the first time and maybe those records are, at this very moment, inspiring her to pick up a guitar and write her first song. It's likely because although Annelle's records haven't hit the mainstream in the fashion of, say, Modest Mouse, the underground press and underground music fans alike seem to hold each new Places release close to their breast, whether it be The Autopilot Knows You Best, A School of Secret Dangers (solo), or the recent Call It Sleep.

The songwriter takes it in stride, seemingly unfazed by the praise and attention she's received, which may not be surprising for those who've read past interviews with her. She's lived in less-than-ideal conditions and worked in greasy spoons, two things likely to remind anyone that positive reviews and wild shrieks of excitement don't add up to much more than that. Still, there are those albums, and the most logical question seems like, 'What's the difference between a Places record and an Amy Annelle record? She writes everything, doesn't she?' Annelle explains it like this: "When I started using the name The Places, I imagined an identity for the songs that I wrote that would have room for everybody. A name seems to grant more freedom and I'm certainly not the first to work this way".

Somewhat less complicated is who she collaborates with—Call It Sleep features members of the Decemberists, the Thermals, 31 Knots and the Swords Project, among others. (She has also collaborated with Tim Perry of Pseudosix and is a touring member of the group). But it's not a case of Annelle seeking out high-profile companions. "[Collaborations have always happened because of] mutual admiration and long-term involvement with similar groups of musicians or similar goals or musical sensibilities. In other words, friends," she adds. "It would be weird to make music any other way. We have all known and supported each other and played music and put shows together and worked crappy jobs or lived in crappy houses together since before anybody's band got big," she points out. "People invest in each other and believe in each other and that's when good things happen."

Of course, bad things can lead to good things, as is the case with the emotional tumult the longtime Oregon resident experienced before making Call It Sleep, which borrows its title from Henry Roth's 1934 novel, which chronicles the life of a Jewish boy in a New York ghetto at the brink of WWI. Title such as "Ruined New Life" might stand as some sort of explanation on their own, but Annelle is fairly open about the source for the material: "These songs were written during a very dark and lonesome time in my life. I was lost and had a lot of reconciling to do," she admits. "I was angry with some people, including myself. I wasn't able to express this directly, which might have liberated me from it. [It was like] my worst fears coming true. I think I wanted to understand and I wanted peace, and I think I was reaching out to anybody who had been in that place, where they needed comfort and offering them the same".

She concludes, "I think because of that, it's probably a fucked up album to understand or want to understand. It's like a fucked up friend who wants to unload and needs maybe more than you want to give." Whether one chooses to delve deeply into Annelle's lyrics or not, they are refined and articulate. She says that she's aware on some level of the process she goes through when writing lyrics.

"I have what is like a channel or stream in my head that's almost always working, whether I want it to or not," she relates, "it's translating things I see or feel into words. It feels like a support beam or an anchor to the earth. It also feels like lucid dreaming, like offerings from my imagination that can be brought back and shared. I write a lot of these things down. It feels extremely personal and I've lied in the past and said that it's not, but it often is. But," she continues, "as these experiences or feelings or whatever start the ball rolling, as these things are coming to the surface in words, I am suspending them, playing with them, and looking for inherent rhythm and relations between them and where their place might be at large, or how they might connect with other people."

To further illustrate, she offers this analogy: "It's like a magnetic board or a screen they are projected onto and I can move them around and work with them before even writing them down. I do try to use efficient phrases but ones that have a lot of power or inferences. It's hard to explain writing a song," she admits. "It is one of my favorite things in the world, though. It feels inevitable."

There is a school of thought that suggests that works of art—paintings, songs, stories—aren't ever really finished but are, instead, abandoned, left to grow on their own. It's a delicate balance and one of which Annelle says she's very aware. "The hardest part is getting out of the way," she points out. "Songs are like gifts and if you get out of their way, they will give themselves over to the performance, the communication. The only thing stopping it is doubt or fear."

"If I have a song that I have recorded or released, it's because I feel like it's said what I wanted to say. In that sense, I probably need to take more chances. I have billions of songs that don't make it that far," she reveals, then says, "Just watch out. Next year I'll unload like, fifteen albums on the public and you'll be stuck reviewing them all, going, "what the fuck is she thinking'?"

All kidding aside, we proceed with the question of whether she thinks her pieces are ever finished. "It may be true [that you abandon—and don't finish—them] and it is a gentle way to assuage any lingering doubts about something one has made," she responds. "I think that albums are more like stories and songs are more like chapters. I've talked with other musicians about 'bookends', how and where to contain things in such a way that it's complete or satisfying or logical. This can be true of a song or tour or album or band even," she notes. "Sometimes it is difficult to know where to put the bookends, since while making a record, especially, you're working with a rather [prolonged] time frame as far as how long it takes to work out the details for recording and releasing it. A lot has come to pass since Call It Sleep was made. A lot of stories and they're all as done as they're gonna be. Now I get to tell them."

Amy Annelle looks like she could be blown across the midwest plains by the slightest of zephyrs. The Places' thread-slender singer has barely more than a scrap of meat on her bones, and her lacy whisper of a voice is as delicate as you're likely to hear outside Elliott Smith's bedroom, so it's damn fortunate her songs carry enough emotional weight to keep her rooted on the stage--and you in your seat. With skeletal guitar-drums accompaniment, Annelle spins downcast tales that meander through dreams of deserted towns, dark stars and broken hearts. They won't knock you over. But they might find you getting sucked in from holding your breath so hard.

Sometimes, the Places play their shows standing up. Standard posture for rock musicians, sure, but when this Portland band does it, it inspires a certain degree of awkwardness in the audience. It's usually just the two of them up there--Amy Annelle and Ryan Stowe--and they play such quiet, pretty music, the vulnerability in standing seems brave.

Originally Annelle's project, she recruited Stowe (who also plays in the Swords Project) to fill her songs out with guitar and short-wave radio. Annelle writes all the songs and lyrics and, as the vocalist, is the focal point of the show. Her eyes are often closed or dreamy, and sometimes her toes turn in, like she's about to fall into a chasm. Stowe is the grounding force, his guitar adding calm, spare notes to Annelle's fleshy chords. You feel slightly uncomfortable seeing it; they look intimate and unaware, but you are watching them.

Early this year, the duo (with help from a cache of Portland's best musicians) released its first full-length, The Autopilot Knows You Best, on Absolutely Kosher Records.

"This record happened one song at a time, over more than a year," Annelle says. "There wasn't a master plan behind it; it was just me and Ryan and our friends on instruments that we were good at, or could make a part on. Most everyone on the record has played in a live version of the Places at some point. It was great to record like that, to get inside each song instead of, 'Okay, basic tracks for everything today, vocals tomorrow.' We recorded it with friends in town [Portland] who had different recording setups (mostly at Type Foundry studios, but also at Jealous Butcher, Jackpot, and on a four-track cassette) before a label wanted to put it out. A lot of shared talent and time and resources is what made it turn out like it did."

The record angles down and cuts straight for the heart. The songwriting is studied and careful, guitars taking ginger steps through the melodies; sometimes more upbeat, but often delicate and pointed, like they're looking straight into your eyes. There are airy drum fills, bittersweet violins and accordions, and vintage record samples in between songs; on their own, those sounds are powerful.

Of her songwriting, Annelle says, "A basic idea, some words or a musical phrase, usually sets off a reaction that starts repeating itself, and I try to let [the song] do whatever it wants. It keeps refining itself, and different melodies come out, and then I'll go home and try it on the four-track and listen, and hate it, and see what is still missing, and so on. It is pretty much a free-for-all, but in the end I think my song structures are pretty simple and familiar. I write more traditional structures. I like resolution."

The songs may be simple, but there's a special secret weapon to the Places--Annelle's voice. She is careful and breathy, as if she's singing stealth secrets in whispers and lullabies. Her harmonies are subtle, imbuing melancholic chords. Sometimes she lets her voice gather friction against itself, while singing lines like, "I couldn't fix you if I wanted to." Her lyrics are personal and straightforward, yet retain a level of the universal esoteric.

"Ninety-nine percent of what I write down never finds its way into a song, but eventually something sticks," she says. "There is a core of some personal experience, but once the gears start having at an idea, things will hopefully shift toward being less personal or diary-like, and more open for people to see their own things in."

There is space in the Places' sentiment. The first line on Autopilot asks, "Do you long for something you could take care of, or it to take care of you?" (from "Own Your Own Home"). She continues with lines such as, "When you fall hard/you see the prettiest stars," and, "Wait for me and take your sleep/without dreams by degrees."

I ask Annelle when it was first apparent that music was important to her. "The first memory like that, I was maybe three or four and I was falling asleep on my bedroom floor. 'I Am the Walrus' by the Beatles was on the clock radio in the next room. I was alone and in the dark, in that space where you are asleep and awake at the same time, and it felt so good and lonely and creepy and transcendent, like listening to the song in its natural habitat."

Listening to the Places is much like listening to music in its natural habitat as well--slow and subtle, as awkward and heavenly as a dream.

In the category of loopy singer-songwriters, Amy Annelle certainly qualifies as a star. The Portland singer is said to work as a forest ranger. She named her tour van "Angel the Diesel Van, member of the Diesel Brotherhood". She covers Syd Barrett and sounds like Kristin Hersh. And she has coerced a group of musicians from the Thermals, Death Cab for Cutie, and the Decemberists, among others, to play rock that swirls around it all as the Places. On the group's latest disc, Call It Sleep, Annelle keeps the songs steeped in an overcast tension: violins skid, trumpet notes flutter, a theremin swirls, guitars gently weep. But her voice, a mumbled whispery thing, comes through gritted teeth, and it's a sound you can't pull away from. The Places play with the Decemberists and the Long Winters at the 9:30 Club.

Someone once referred to the Places' Amy Annelle as the "female Elliott Smith". But apart from living in Portland, being rather skinny and displaying a penchant for subtle, quiet folk-pop, she doesn't have all that much in common with that other singer-songwriter-guitarist. Nor that she'd mind the comparison--after all, she covered a tune by Smith's old band Heatmiser along with songs by Roy Harper and Ronnie Lane.
For Annelle 2001 was a very busy year. She toured nonstop and released three records: the fantastic, somewhat overlooked Places album "The Autopilot Knows You Best"; a dreamy solo LP titled "A School of Secret Dangers"; and an EP with a postrocky sort of group called The Swords Project.
Annelle stands out by expertly applying interesting vocal phrasing to her vague abstract, poetry-style lyrics ("A see-through soaring lucid true girl/writing stories on a floating blue world"). At a Tonic gig in October, she led her bandmates through a series of dark-yet-hopeful country-tinged pop songs, making for a quieter affair than "The Autopilot" would suggest. The Places' earthy songwriting on such tracks as the blissful "Ode to The Exhausted" can be pretty damned exhilerating, and the group's live vibe is like a campfire in the woods, which should bring dizzying pleasure to folks who'd fancy a stripped-down Lampchop or stress-free Cat Power.

The Places' Amy Annelle doesn't need to scout for sounds: they find her. On her band's latest album, Call It Sleep, many of those sounds wafted in via shortwave radio, and into songs like the haunting "Dead Reckoning". While Annelle's creations are simple, they resonate with a depth that belies the fact that she didn't pick up a guitar until age 21. Lyrics drawn from the "books and books full of homeless words" she's amassed for over a decade and a revolving cast of players make Call It Sleep a multi-textured work of nocturnal beauty.-Susan Moll