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March 2002, Pulse: TowerRecords.com
Alison Shaw doesn't laugh. She titters like any good Dickens ragamuffin should. She's reminiscing about the four-year sabbatical her band, Cranes, took before the release of its long-awaited new CD, Future Songs (Instinct). Shaw spent a couple of those years studying drama in London. Has she always had an acting bug?
"Not really. A friend of mine--she's a director--we were sitting around one day, thinking, 'What can I do?' It was a 'what can I do with my life' kind of thing!" Shaw enrolled in a voice class and it was a teacher that suggested that she take up the thespian arts.
"I really enjoyed it. I found it really interesting. It was good to study again and do something that's outside of music, because pretty much my whole adult life has been spent doing music."
In pop culture, four years is geological time. Movements and careers have come and gone since. But for Shaw and band member/brother, Jim, the break was out of necessity.
"After the last Cranes' album, we'd done a lot of touring; we felt like we needed a bit of a change," she explains. "We did have a bit of a rough patch within the group around about the time of Population Four, which was in 1997. That was a low point for us for many different reasons. I do think we needed to have a bit of breathing space to kind of recover ourselves. 1997 became like this big change period where we weren't really sure what we were going to do."
Paring down to just the Shaw siblings, Cranes retreated to their home base of Portsmouth, England. A couple of years passed before an invitation to play a special show in Belgium pressed the duo into activity, writing a new song for the occasion, "Future Song," which would become the first track of the same-titled record. Inspired by the new material, they spent most of 2000 recording at Jim's home studio. Barring some guitar on one track, every stitch of music was played by Jim and Alison.
About Future Songs, Shaw says, "It feels like the songs properly reflect what we're about at the moment." Her lyrical obsessions are still heartbreak haikus and whispered regrets, but musically they've gone from View Master to IMAX. The cinematic scope has widened and every sound hand-crafted instead of machine-made. Cranes replace their earlier black and white goth-isms with velvety violets and moody maroons. Ornate without being garish. And yes, Alison sounds all the more like a wayward waif in the deep and dark.
Like the swallows of Capistrano, Cranes have come back, too.
Reviewed by Dennis Yudt
© Pulse: TowerRecords.com 2002
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