Claire Anne Taylor
Giving It Away
There’s so much new music that comes down the information superhighway, a veritable landslide of songs and singer-songwriters opening up their hearts and baring their souls. To be honest, most of it is bland and derivative and you have to wade through an avalanche of mediocre to find the gold. But when you strike something special it stands out immediately – a shining light of heartfelt honesty and talent amid the pretenders. Claire Anne Taylor and her third album Giving It Away is the perfect example of just that.
The Tasmanian-born songwriter has one of those voices that should, if you have any kind of musical appreciation, stop you in your tracks. It’s all beautiful rough and smokey soul and ragged bluesy holler. There’s country in there too, more-so in the details and twangy deep grooves of the musical palette she employs to frame her songs.
Taylor covers varied terrain too. ‘Dance With Death’ could be Tom Waits skipping down main street New Orleans, while the opening chords of ‘Stuck Around’ sounds like an amalgam of Dire Straits and Lou Reed given a gorgeous Memphis gospel feel through the rhythm section and backing harmonies.
In my review of the single ‘Keep On Truckin’’ I said… “Imagine Joplin kicking up dust at an Outback truck stop,” and you can certainly picture an open highway with the window down and JJ Cale on a distant FM station as Taylor writes brilliantly evocative lines such as ‘He was flash as a rat with a gold tooth. In his flat brim hat and black tracksuit’.
There’s an undeniable darkness at times on Giving It Away, a kind of gothic blues rock. ‘If You Should See Sunshine’ belies the brightness of its title, digging in and getting primal and dirty. The following track ‘Lay You Down in the Cold Hard Ground’ dials in some febrile, electrically charged guitar over a Zeppelin rhythm as Taylor testifies to the dark side.
The moving ‘Just A Kid’ explores innocence in the face of heartbreaking news. When singer-songwriter Claire Anne Taylor’s 14-month-old son was diagnosed with the rare genetic condition Angelman Syndrome, her world was turned upside down. But rather than turn her back on her lifelong career, music became her therapy; allowing her to face head on the feelings and fears that came with the life-changing news.
“Death is a prominent theme throughout the album,” explains Taylor. “Whether it is the death of a loved one, the death of a life you might have imagined for yourself, the death of a dream, or the death of a love shared with someone.”
There are so many micro-moments that stand out across the album, just listen in at 2:40 on the title track as Taylor’s voice hits a phenomenal husky quiver, the note shimmering gloriously. Just one small example of how she can manifest raw and deep emotion in her vocal chords.
On the closing track ‘The River Song’, Taylor channels her folk roots in a drifting, dreamy reverie; its title prompting an analogy between the sound of her voice and the dynamics of the natural world. There’s an inherent sense of a Tasmanian wilderness barely tamed, nestled between oceanic currents of emotion and a darker, more guarded interior landscape.
The album was recorded by Chris Townend (Portishead, Silverchair, Tim Finn) at MONA’s legendary Frying Pan Studios where the the original mixing desk from Abbey Road Studios, used by The Beatles and Pink Floyd, now resides. It’s a fantastic sounding album, resonant with a sonic depth and real sense of space, given extra width and warmth courtesy of the reverb on both the instruments and Taylor’s vocal.
Giving It Away is a heavy album, not sonically, though it does possess gravitas, but more in terms of the weight of the lived experience and the hurdles and hardships that it presents. Most importantly though, there’s a sense of resolve that outshines and outweighs the heartache and fear. A determination to push on. It’s not often you come across music this real and affecting and so when you do it demands to be shared and acknowledged as a great work.
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