This collection acts as a fantastic introduction to Sally's solo work and fronting the Sumacs. A versatile singer and talented composer with work in various genres, Doherty's name shouldn't be unfamiliar with Sol Invictus fans and those who trolled the World Serpent catalogs ages ago. This disc compiles music from her albums from 1996 through 2002, mostly originally distributed by World Serpent, along with some previously unreleased material.
Sally has performed with Shock Headed Peters, Richard Hawley, Planet Funk, and Sol Invictus; composed music for the BBC; and fronts a jazz band, Los Amores; but her solo work/leading the Sumacs is the bulk of her output. It's clearly the best too. Her voice shines bright and occasionally flutters delicately, reminding me of Caroline Crawley and how I miss Shelleyan Orphan. All of the instrumentation is classical—piano, strings, guitar, wind instruments—but the songs have a mixture of influences including folk, vocal jazz, and pop standards as well as some European folk.
The album opens with "This Is What She Said," a song from 2000's On the Outside, which, after nearly seven years remains her most recent album of all original material. It's no surprise that it is the album most represented here with five songs, as most artists will choose their most recent material over older songs. In this case, it's probably the strongest material, where the lush instrumental arrangements and multiple vocal parts are top notch. As most of her releases have songs of similar themes, mixing things up says more about versatility. The stunning piano gem "The Shore" follows, giving a great contrast from the lush opener and the following "La Llorna," a gorgeous Mexican folk song from her album of folk standards from 2002, Black Is the Colour. Doherty's arrangements of the folk songs are quite faithful, with Spanish guitar on "La Llorna" or an unoffensive tin whistle on Celtic love song "My Lagan Love" later on the collection.
It's hard not to find parallels to Antony and the Johnsons, from the name (Sally's more than likely paying tribute to one of her idols, Yma Sumac, but I can't figure out the origin of Antony's Johnson) to the instrumentation, as Antony's I am a Bird Now album is mostly drum-free as is nearly all of Sally's work.
Sally's arrangement muscles flex for two songs from the Empire of Death release, a score for a BBC documentary of the same name about discoveries made in the 1930s of an ancient African empire with "evidence of a bizarre death culture." The music of "Mourning 1" and "One Voice 1" are both eerie and warm and rich enough that I'm sure they worked perfectly, but also provide more variety on this 17 song collection. The oldest piece, "I Am a River," dates back to Sally's eponymous 1996 album, and I'm rather glad this is the only song from this era, as the congas and bongos mixed with the vocal harmony line are a bit too Dead Can Dance/Heavenly Voices-wannabe goth for my tastes. Luckily "An Open Boat," a previously unreleased song follows, similar in style to the other unreleased piano piece from earlier and equally as precious.
According to her Web site, in the five years since Black is the Colour, Sally has been busy with her band Los Amores, composing for more BBC programs, and working with another composer as she claims her "solo project isn't solo any more," so it's unclear if this disc is pretty much the history of Sally and the Sumacs start to the end. With any luck the next new material to surface picks up where this leaves off but I won't be holding my breath.
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