Anne Clark – Pressure Points

To the present day, people seem to greet Anne Clark for "Our Darkness" and "Sleeper In Metropolis" alone but "Pressure Points" stands out as one of her finest albums.

Spoken word is always riding its dangerous thin line, crossing into the one trick pony territory, and Clark's at times indeed sounds like high school poetry at best. Her poems placed along with amazing electro templates do work in interesting ways but sometimes you wish she would actually sing rather than constantly recite, because it ain't easy to absorb most of her albums in one whole listen. The sound of Anne Clark's voice alone does possess a strong character and that's what gives her charm (as is the case with the immortal punk poet John Cooper Clarke), although her diction while tends to sound academic, actually comes out sounding too naive (if not childish).

On "Pressure Points" though, along with the programmed rhythms and the prevailing melodic melancholy, her voice is punching nicely all the way through, suitably toned down thus giving her often angry Weltschmerz recitals a nicer narrative dynamic, wrapped around the lush electronic arrangements. That said, there are no weak tracks here - the album produced by John Foxx and gathering a number of fellow music writers, the necessary evil of pointing out a few stand out gems insists on David Harrow's newer version of "The Power Game" (one of this album's epic highlights), along with the amazing "Red Sands" (courtesy Foxx himself), and especially "Bursting" (composed by Jim Manray) - a moment of such beauty and exploding passion, making it one of Clark's best ever songs.