Liverpool-based ANNA TAI-HOGAN arrived on the scene seemingly from nowhere with her debut single ‘Seek the Truth’ just prior to Christmas 2011.
It was an impressive start, too, with Anna’s expressively earthy voice gliding over a groove that was as sultry as the heat-soaked desert imagery of the lyric (“sandy roads and desert land/ the heat swelters in my mind/ and the blue water cools and it fills/ take these veils from me”).
The B-side ‘My Love’ was something else again. Stripped down and introspective, it found her voice ebbing and swelling over a minimal, circular guitar figure, haunted only by the most distant shadow of harmonica.
Should her debut LP ‘Neilos (Part 1)’ have been rush-released by a corporate label, it’s likely that the more obviously structured A-side is the one that would have been earmarked as the blueprint for the album’s backdrop, but as it stands ‘My Love’ is the far more accurate signpost to where Anna Tai-Hogan’s muse is headed.
For while ‘Neilos’ is undoubtedly brave, thoroughly individual and often highly worthy of praise, it’s not a record that will suit those looking for a quick fix. It’s been made by a sky-scraping free spirit and on a few occasions - especially during ‘My Love’ and the watershed of the closing ‘The Sky Holds Me’ – it can feel like you’re eavesdropping on emotional blood-letting that’s perhaps just a little too personal for comfort.
But that’s not to say ‘Neilos’ is short on quality or soul, though it’s certainly otherworldly fare for a debut album. A reprised ‘Seek The Truth’ features producer Mike Badger’s band The Shady Trio in support, but aside from that the sonic window dressing is minimal. There’s a feathering of electric guitar here and there, some wonderfully Chet Baker-ish trumpet on the noir-ish ‘From You’ and some pretty ripples of harp on ‘More For You’, but Anna Tai-Hogan is at the centre of everything, with her shape-shifting voice accompanied occasionally by chromatic piano (‘A Little More’) but mostly by her stark and percussive acoustic guitar.
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Though Tai-Hogan will probably find herself compared with the more out-there females of the species (Kate Bush and Bjork, especially), ‘Neilos’ is primarily about feel and taking courageous chances and during the course of its most striking tracks - the almost subliminal beauty of ‘Love Me’, the broken, jazzy ‘From You’ and the sparse, elongated blues of ‘Say You Will’ where she almost has to drag the vocal out of herself – it feels like a distant cousin of Tim Buckley’s ‘Starsailor’: another LP which initially confounded but has gradually been re-appraised as a career best.
Intriguingly, the nearest translation from the Greek ‘Neilos’ is ‘Nile’ which seems fitting, for Anna Tai-Hogan’s genre-defying music is every bit as deep, mysterious and elusive as the famous river of the same name. Once it’s started to seep into your soul, you’ll be too fascinated to see what’s around the next bend to even think of making for the safety of the shore.
Anna Tai-Hogan online
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