{"id":15923,"date":"2016-09-14T15:55:19","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T19:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=15923"},"modified":"2023-11-19T17:52:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T22:52:56","slug":"playing-detroit-album-review-anna-ash-floodlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/playing-detroit-album-review-anna-ash-floodlights\/","title":{"rendered":"PLAYING DETROIT: Anna Ash “Floodlights”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"98abf80409e9b52e2e44035c96fbbc5a_original\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Michigan native and L.A resident, Anna Ash is holding on, not back. A sincere sorceress of internal voyeurism, Ash\u2019s fragile confidence stands firm ground and shines brightly on her sophomore record Floodlights<\/i> released earlier this week. Slide guitar and dusty, feathered percussion dip and sway against Ash\u2019s strikingly pure and piercing songbird soprano. Floodlights<\/i> is a poignant display of a love run dry and\/or a love gone awry that rolls with the patience of an impending storm on the horizon; lightening without the thunder.<\/p>\n

Is Floodlights<\/i> a country record? Maybe. It tangos with rock n roll attitude on occasion and yanks on some folky heartstrings, too. But beyond genre displacement, the record is a grand achievement in story telling, quietly exposing the deepest layers of epidermis with a tender honesty that doesn\u2019t require categorization, only reflection.<\/p>\n

Recorded in Minnesota, mastered on the West Coast and the reprisal of Ash\u2019s Michigan band (Joe Dart, Julian Allen, and James Cornelison) Floodlights <\/i>creation is as well traveled as the pictorial pastures and valleys the album dares to explore. \u201cPlayer\u201d is finger waving, audacious dose of told-you-so whereas Ash\u2019s Lucinda Williams cover \u201cFruits of my Labor\u201d is a sensual peach bite coated in sultry regret and the track \u201cHold On\u201d is a bouncy series of what-if\u2019s and hypothetical missteps. No ground is left uncovered on Floodlights<\/i> but it isn\u2019t until the title\/closing track that we are forced to our knees after a perilously raw journey through Ash\u2019s beautifully tormented history. Barely exceeding a whisper, Ash compares the shake of an old car to the way her voice warbles when she lies, professing that \u201cIt ain’t gonna kill you to sleep alone once and a while.\u201d A heart wrenching, steering wheel clenching kiss goodbye to us, to them, to who she is or was, \u201cFloodlights\u201d as a singular track and as a collection rattles with a tender brutality that is relatable and malleable, melted and frozen.<\/p>\n

Mostly Midwest<\/a>\u00a0premiered the album this week and is streaming it in it’s entirety now. Check out the playful track “Player” below:<\/p>\n

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But beyond genre displacement, the record is a grand achievement in story telling, quietly exposing the deepest layers of epidermis with a tender honesty that doesn\u2019t require categorization, only reflection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":15924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6732,4392],"tags":[5061,5070,842,416,5064,988,4798,3522,5063,1453,5068,5065,5062,1386,5069,552,1385,5067,5066],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/98abf80409e9b52e2e44035c96fbbc5a_original.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15923"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48566,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15923\/revisions\/48566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}