About Me
A lifetime’s dedication to her art has made Annie Gallup something of a high priestess among people who take songwriting seriously. With every project, she challenges herself and her audience, returning to the canvas with relentless creative energy. Her discipline is to render life as it is truly - and messily - experienced, rather than how we might wish it to be. Annie: “this stripped down melodic collection somehow feels like the highest risk I've ever taken, but it's hard to quantify the risk. ...This one is a free fall.†Half of My Crime, recorded mostly as live studio takes, features duets with bass players taking the roles of bass, rhythm, lead, voice, synthesizer. The arrangements are collaborative, leaving space to feature the distinctive musical personality of each of the players: Sean Kelly, upright bass; Michael Visceglia, fretless, electric and processed bass; and Don Porterfield, fretless bass.
Borrowing forms from ancient folk tales and modern poetry, Gallup sings over her practiced bluesy guitar figures as if sharing secrets. The characters on “Half of My Crime†are wounded and wounding, seeking love and lost in confusion, full of mystery and longing: portraits so real they seem to move beyond their frames. Like the photographer Diane Arbus, Annie Gallup shows us a parallel world, singular and difficult, a mirror in which we find perplexity, sorrow, and the unresolved. And yet, at the end of the day, we are left with nothing but an awed silence. Having returned us to ourselves, the artist has left the room.
