Reading the biography of Anna Domino (née Anna Taylor) that LTM – inarguably the most sympathetic of historical arbiters of our post punk music culture - has once again superlatively written to accompany this compilation it’s difficult to shake the belief that Anna’s life has often been more fulfilling than the music she has made, the latter failing to reach its full potential in reflecting the spirit which created it.
Born in Tokyo Anna spent her childhood years flitting between Michigan, Florence and Ottawa. In 1977 she settled in New York, where at first she made a living refurbishing lofts and making clothes, furniture and objet d’art. By night she performed in a variety of groups – one of whom, Polyrock, went on to have an album produced by Phillip Glass – until a cassette of her songs hit the desk of Belgian label Les Disques du Crepescule in 1983. Her first single with the label ‘Trust In Love’ was a NME single of the week. The rest as they say…….
The 16 songs on Dreamback cover the period 1984 to 1996 but the bulk of tracks are from just the first four years with two songs from 1990 and another from 1996. The production is very much of its time and the smooth, predominantly synthesised arrangements sound dated, lessening the impact of the rhythms that Anna incorporates. You feel that she had good musical ideas and enjoyed working in different genres ranging from dance/pop to balladry but was poorly served by producers constantly looking to subjugate her uniqueness and her ‘edge’ by housing everything in radio-friendly blandness. The overriding impression I have is that here was a musician whose artistic freedom was severely curtailed in its formative years by management pressures to deliver a hit record, unable to decide whether they had a Madonna or a Suzanne Vega on their hands.
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Luckily Anna’s lyrics have not suffered with the passing of time and her words alone warrant this reappraisal. Even the most obvious and direct pop songs such as ‘Summer’, ‘Take That’ and ‘Time For Us’ cannot disguise her intelligent observations on life and love, predominantly focusing on the downside. From the eighties era her four songs from the album This Time – particularly the scratchy insistence of the dance/pop track ‘She Walked’ (reminiscent of Grace Jones) and the Oriental classical waltz of ‘Lake - are the most accomplished. But it is on the mini pop masterpiece of 1990’s ‘Bonds of Love’ that Anna truly excels in her lyricism as she intimately recounts in detail a relationship rendered turbulent by the limitations that love imposes on individual freedom.
A true poet working in a decidedly commercial medium that often fails to nurture the talent it has in its possession, it must be hoped that the 8 years since her last release are merely a long pause in her career rather than an anti-climactic retirement from it.
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