Amy Annelle is a gifted songwriter and performer: daringly original, unaffected and affecting, but all the while answering to some ancient, spooky muse. And on her latest, "Call It Sleep," she has reunited with The Places to create a devastating, gorgeous wreck of an album. The Places, culled from members of the Thermals, Death Cab for Cutie, and The Decemberists, prove the perfect translators of Annelle's latest songwriting trip: down murky tunnels lit with escape and addiction, rootlessness, betrayal, and empathy for the enemy. Though the last Places album might have been called hopeful, "Call It Sleep" finds the group truly haunted, exploring deeper palettes of improvisation, psychedelia, and found sounds. It also employs a jazz-inspired lineup (upright bass and violin, vibrophone, piano, brushed drums, and trumpet), although The Places are too weird to stick to one musical genre. Instead they wander wide-eyed through '60s folk-rock, futuristic murder ballads, and intuitively shifting time signatures. The arrangements elaborate on Annelle's dusky narratives, while allowing her silky, almost in-your-head vocals to deliver the fatal blows.





Fans of the dark and lucid songwriting of Black Heart Procession, Cat Power, or Dirty Three will surely feel right at home here. What unfolds in the course of "Call It Sleep" is akin to Big Star's "Third/Sister Lovers" or Nick Drake's "Bryter Layter": a beautifully battered, subtly detailed map of the dark side.