Allison’s Gate is the project of Channel Island native, South London resident, Carolina McPhail. Following last year’s album Sink/Swim, a collection of bedroom recordings put to tape by Memorials of Distinction, McPhail has created another album, perhaps her last home-recorded stuff before a full-time release slated for next year.
Like most Memorials of Distinction releases, Allison’s Gate makes music built on a sense of loneliness, dissociation and pain. But that doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful. It’s art that feels weary and bruised but somehow defiant, creativity as both an outlet and a remedy. As the title suggests, Waves / Bona Fide can be split into two parts. Comprising of the first five tracks, Waves has the ethereal, submerged vibe of Grouper, what Memorials of Distinction describe as “the lulls and flows of abstracted noises, delays and flutters, tender vocals flitting in and out of audibility.” The eerily affecting opener ‘Glass Bed’ sets the tone, an instrumental that plunges us into a strange and shadowy world that’s not quite our own.
When they do appear on ‘I Should Go’, the vocals are run through effects so as to be made strange, as if emanating from the shifting walls of a dream. There’s a similar effect on ‘Infatuation (up and down)’, its layered vocals ringing out like the indistinct cries of yearning ghosts, while ‘January’ is all electronic bubbles and glitches beneath the billowing curtain of McPhail’s wordless voice.
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The final three songs are Bona Fide, tracks that are more conventional in structure, the murky nature of Waves seared away by uncontainable feeling. It begins with the title track which simmers with sardonic rage, the repetitive guitar line woozy and hypnotic as McPhail calls out a “bona fide piece of shit.”
There’s a slower start to ‘Leave the Lights on’, which recalls Yowler in its stark and spacious sound, but things soon become shot through with feeling as the vocals rise in waves that crash around the thin thread of guitar at the song’s centre. Finale ‘Traces’ closes out the album with urgent lo-fi guitar and a breathless and desperate stream of lyrics. Think emotional pop smash hit but at the bottom of a pond at midnight. It might be the strongest song on the release, and means next year’s proper full-length can’t come soon enough.
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You can get Waves / Bona Fide on a name-your-price basis via the Memorials of Distinction Bandcamp page.