What is the current carrying us? Do we swim against it, or do we drift at its mercy? On the stunning and immersive EP Do You Dream of Me Too?, Anne-Claire delves into a dreamworld of desperation and redemption with sweeping orchestral arrangements and powerful vocal performances that trace the shape of the answers just outside our reach.
On her 2018 debut I Still Look for You and the 7” follow-up Jean Jacket, Anne-Claire covered a vast pop terrain, ranging from jazz and soul to synth-drive dance floor anthems. But as the isolation of COVID lockdown set in, she felt a growing distance from the sounds that had sustained her first releases, and like so many of us she looked inward for answers. Or more specifically, backward— into her past, to the American songbook and big-band songs she was raised on. The tight composition, lush instrumentation, and dramatic scope of her influences opened a path forward for her songwriting, away from the personal coming of age focus of her early releases and into a more unsettled, exploratory balance between image and narrative.
Do You Dream of Me Too? embodies this new approach with orchestral arrangements conducted and recorded live at Manifold Studio in Pittsboro, NC. The legendary Chris Stamey provided the arrangement for opening track “Night of the Hunter,” while Triangle luminary Jeff Crawford (Watchhouse, The Dead Tongues) arranged the title track. Other arrangements come from Anne-Claire’s longtime collaborator and husband Charles Cleaver and the virtuosic Sinclair Palmer (Anjimile, Tallest Man on Earth). Together, these players and composers give Anne-Claire her richest palette yet, and a fully worthy accompaniment to one of North Carolina’s truly incredible voices. Anne-Claire’s vocal performance ranges from haunting to starkly intimate to exuberant and almost recklessly playful—a range that could only find its full expression against the dynamic composition she and her collaborators have found here.
Do You Dream of Me Too? is unlike any other record in recent memory from the Triangle. Studied but irreverent, composed but far-reaching, it blends genres and vernaculars into a single captivating trance, with one of our most startling and inimitable voices at its center.
What is it we feel pulling us? The answer isn’t simple, but it is here.
