Ann Scott - We're Smiling
Ann Scott is a singer-songwriter from Dublin, and that simple, possibly reductive description probably actually does, in this case, give you a reasonably good idea of what to expect on this, her second album after 2005’s self-financed debut ‘Poor Horse’. Despite apparently having a reputation as an intense live performer, what you get - on this record’s evidence, at least - are a whole lot of slightly predictable songs about heartache (“Jealousy / Has come over me” from ‘Jealousy’); or anticipation of love (‘Hot Day’, with its repetitious “… as I waited for you” refrain; and the slightly too similar ‘Mountain’ which follows it, this time repeating a “I went to see him…” refrain), mostly touched with a slight air of melancholy .
There are also some more oblique, mystical, Celtic-tinged tracks (think The Corrs-meet-Clannad, but a bit less so), as in “Still o still a thousand stars” (‘100 Dances, 1,000 Stars); “Let me out of here / I cannot stop the flow / I want to reach you / I am the antelope” (‘Down At The Parlour’) and the exhortation to “follow me in this dream / Through this maze, across the sea / In this water” in ‘Imelda’.
Through all this, the vocal, though tuneful enough, in a breathy sort of way, seems curiously impersonal and disengaged, given that it is delivering self-penned and presumably heartfelt words. There’s strangely little that really grasps the listener’s attention, or that stays with you at the album’s close. The instrumental backing is quite wispy, with the occasional electro glitch thrown into the mix in a really rather half-hearted way from time to time.
Really, then, that is as much of a summation as I can probably give. If you enjoy ethereal female twitterings such as I’ve described above, then you will probably quite like ‘We’re Smiling’. There is nothing particularly objectionable about it, certainly, but neither, really, is there that much that is particularly worth seeking out. It is possible that in the context of those intense live performances these songs may shine a little brighter than they appear to do on record.