Austin-based singer-songwriter Amy Annelle has announced her forthcoming LP, ‘The Toll,’ due out on 2nd August 2024, on the High Plains High label. Annelle, who is emerging from a long battle with chronic illness, last released an album ‘The Great Unveiling’ in 2013. That record included her rendition of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Buckskin Stallion Blues’, which featured prominently in the Academy Award-nominated film, ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’. Annelle’s return was co-produced by Cooper McBean of The Devil Makes Three and recorded at the Hedgewitch Hideaway in Montopolis, Texas with a group of sympathetic Austin studio players. The 12-track treasure was borne from the depths of a restive soul and explores elemental lyrical themes. ‘The Toll’ can be pre-saved here.
Since her 1998 debut, Annelle, who has also contributed to the work of fellow artists Bill Callahan, Daniel Johnston, Michael Hurley, and Jandek, has released a series of solo albums, first as The Places, then under her own name. After a few years spent in Portland, Oregon’s music scene, she made a home on the road, touring as a soloist or with pickup groups that brought together friends from folk, jazz, country, and experimental circles.
The first single, ‘Pull Tabs and Broken Glass’, featuring harmony vocals from Jolie Holland is about remembrance – pull tabs on the ground from days gone by, broken glass from old windowpanes, markers of time from a life once lived. It’s about secret hopes and dreams, acknowledging the stories that haunt the past. The setting could be a tiny old house in Texas – shaded by ancient oaks, evening coming down, memories and ghosts stirring from the shadows.
I must be getting too much sleep; this is another great track from someone who has slipped under my radar. Will look to rectify that with “The Toll’ in August. Thanks Richard.