Annie Hogan - Tongues In My Head

Arriving soon...

Unexpectedly grand sounding return from Annie Hogan, the storied post-punk (mostly) pianist with varying ties to Marc Almond, Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch, Simon Fisher Turner++. Hogan has a multi-decade career, though her affiliation with Downwards appears to have precipitated a second act of sorts. Tongues In My Head is arguably her best work for the label to date. That these six tracks were mostly recorded in single takes betrays the gothic grandiosity at their centre, driven along by epic piano, trudging drum machines and vocal performances from Hogan that flit between the solemn and the coquettish. Tongues In My Head presents as part of a kind of classic lineage, possessed of the feel of an 80s Bad Seeds offshoot, somewhere between the solo outings of Barry Adamson and Conway Savage, the heavy folk-drone of Cynthia Dall, and, dare I say it, some of the piano ballads that comprised that output of mid-late period Radiohead (ala 'Pyramid Song'). What it also shares with those other artists is an implied cinematic scope, as if these modestly conceived chamber song could potentially frame much wider vistas. It's a credit to Hogan's songcraft that she doesn't require an awful lot to create a sense of a whole lot more.