Annabel (lee)’s debut album By the sea… and other solitary places is a hypnotic, vivid, incantatory masterpiece – the sort of album that will define passages of its listeners’ lives thereafter they hear it.
Annabel (lee) is named after an Edgar Allen Poe poem. They are Annabel (not Lee) on vocals and lyrics and Richard E, a north Yorkshireman (production) who is best known for his work on Further Out Recordings. They were regulars at the If Music shop in the late 00s, brought together by a shared love of the diversity offered in Soho’s buzzing streets.
Jean-Claude of If Music first recognised their talent in 2007 when he DJ’d before their live performance at 3 Blind Mice in London. Then, completely out of the blue 18 months ago, they sent Jean-Claude their album By the sea… and other solitary places. Invoking the haunting classicism of Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, intermingled with the quiet folklore of Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell, and tipped with the jazz stylings of Miles Davis and Billie Holiday