Raindancing

Hmmm.  Not a happy time.  Bad move, someone so very European in her influences making an album with an American producer and an album that was ultimately left to engineers.  I had a manager at the time who was going good business in the states and saw it as the place to be.  I had become very unsure of my own instincts and went with the flow.  I do like some of the songs but the conception of them was all wrong…what was written as jangly, english irony got the american session, pop treatment.  I didn’t involve myself in the “sound”.

I was on my own out there for many months without anyone from my camp.  Missing home and the things that mattered.  I was not the full shilling all the time and wasn’t interested in recording or records.  I was driving on cruise control.  It was made and not felt.  It sold well but was received as the filler that it was.  The first time I ever recorded a song because I knew it was a hit.  Not good.  A bad time all in as much as I liked LA.  There followed a lack-lustre yearlong tour that was equally uncomfortable and signaled the break down in my relationship with the label.  I was coerced into releasing Love Letters – a cynical shower.  I didn’t recognise myself or my tastes in the sounds and serves me right”
Alison writing here, May 2007