Anat Damon - Falling (2003) MP3

Falling is an impressive debut album, particularly for a singer/songwriter who didn't even start guitar lessons or writing songs until she was almost thirty. Most debuts are derivative of or at least readily comparable to bigger names, but it's hard to place Damon next to any convenient benchmarks. The confident layered production and mix of pop smarts with artiness recalls Kate Bush in sensibility, perhaps, though Damon's voice doesn't sound at all like Bush's, and her material is less pretentious. While the songs tend toward the gently melodic side and the lyrics toward the give-and-take struggles of romantic and sexual relationships, there's an uneasy kick to the way they're spun, perhaps influenced by her own extensive academic work in psychology. Her voice has an appealing shy sultriness, and while her foreign accent is noticeable, actually it sounds kind of cool, without impeding the vocal clarity. Her stance is one of offering intimacy that's both inviting and unsettling, the lyrics of "Naughty" in particular hinting at the dark side of attraction, plaintively asking "why is it hard to see the worst in me?" as if that's exactly what she wants to show off. Leaving aside the interpersonal dynamics of the compositions, on a sheer sonic level the production is quite pleasurable, gracefully blending in touches of orchestration, psychedelia, slide guitar, and quite late-'60s Beatles-ish strings. Some of the fresher indie rock of the early 2000s came from Israel, and this is an honorable entry into that field, yet more admirable in that (unlike some of the other better Israeli indie rock of the period) it doesn't lean heavily on retro- psychedelia or 1960s-indebted approaches.